


Fragile Things

by Cinderstrato



Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Justice League International (Comics)
Genre: Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And an AU World in Which Project OMAC Never Happened, Booster Doesn't Handle It Too Well Though, F/M, Featuring a Non-Evil Max Lord, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Health Issues, Hurt/Comfort, In Which Ted Is Surprisingly Not Dramatic About His Own Mortality, Jealousy, M/M, Medical Procedures, Team as Family, because I say so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-05-31 07:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19421623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderstrato/pseuds/Cinderstrato
Summary: It said an awful lot about the state of Ted's life that, after a career of dodging bullets, fighting space aliens, and getting put into comas, cholesterol would be the thing that finally killed him.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> A few things up front: this is a straight-up AU in which Infinite Crisis didn't happen, Max Lord didn't become a cackling supervillain, and Ted kept his brains inside his skull. Because DC continuity is a clusterfuck, I'm taking bits and pieces from both pre-New 52 and the current Rebirth runs. Also, Tora is alive, because reasons. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**FRAGILE THINGS**

* * *

_ONE_

* * *

Ted Kord had always liked a challenge. 

His love of puzzles was, at its heart, the reason he’d become an inventor; his interest in figuring out how to make machines work had lent itself naturally to engineering, and a (fruitless) desire to force the universe to make sense had led him to theoretical mathematics. To him, a challenge meant finally solving the professor’s bonus equation, or completing the circuitry that would power a solar battery. Later in life, a challenge had meant leaping out into the cold Chicago air on a skywire, the wind buffeting his goggles as he dove after a troop of bank robbers to dispense justice. Much later in life, it meant struggling to keep breathing through the blood in his mouth as he was smashed into the side of a car by a homicidal space alien.

Much, much later in life, it meant not falling asleep in a board meeting. 

These days, however, a challenge meant a mid-morning visit from a persistent best friend who assumed that the word ‘no’ was an invitation for open debate. 

“C’mon, just this once.” 

“That’s what you said last time.” Ted saved the completed budget report to his desktop, pointedly not looking over his shoulder where his friend was floating four feet off the ground. “I hate it when you do that.”

Booster flipped upside down. With his blond hair dangling from the boxy opening of his cowl, he looked like a very tan Chia Pet. “Let’s go already; we’re losing time. Can I catch a ride in the Bug? I flew all the way from DC, and boy, are my arms------”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. And could you please come through the lobby like a normal person? Angie’s going to start thinking you don’t like her. Booster Gold squeezing his shiny tights through my office window isn’t doing any favors for the whole secret identity thing either.”

“So? You’re retired anyway.”

Ted cupped a hand to his ear. “What’s that? Did you just admit that I’m retired?”

Booster floated over the desk and stole Ted’s overflowing inbox tray, a few papers fluttering to the floor. “We need the Blue Beetle.”

“I’m not the Blue Beetle anymore. Jaime is, and he’s doing a great job, and you should give him a call right now.” Ted made a grab for the tray, but Booster bobbed just out of reach. “Give me that! Seriously, if I don’t get those done today, Mel is going to roast me alive and serve me with a side of horseradish.” He made a diversionary lunge and then snuck the other arm around to goose Booster, who squealed and dropped the tray into Ted’s waiting hands. “Thank you.”

“I know you’ve been helping Jaime out,” Booster accused, rubbing his tush as he drifted back down to the floor. “You’re sort of the Blue Beetle.”

“Fine, I’m Blue Sort-of Beetle. How about you call the Beetle who doesn’t require a disclaimer?”

“I don’t want Jaime.”

“Why?”

“Because this job is above his pay grade. Fire says these androids are supposed to be super strong, and he might get hurt. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you? For this, we need some powerhouses, like you.” 

“Jaime has the Scarab and a near-indestructible exoskeleton. I have PPE and a leotard.” 

Booster made finger-guns at him. “Your brain is a powerhouse.”

“Yes, but my brain isn’t going to suplex an android. What’s the real reason?”

“I just told you,” Booster said, way too defensively. 

“Uh-huh.”

Booster started shuffling his feet. “Fine. I don’t want to call Jaime because I owe him money.”

Ted blinked at him. “Did you hit up a child for cash?”

“He’s seventeen!” 

“Oh my God.” 

“It was only forty bucks,” Booster protested. “I’ll pay him back. Things are just tight right now -- you know how it is. I’ve got a new deal in the pipes.”

“You always do,” Ted sighed. After making a mental note to transfer some funds into Booster’s checking account and to have a talk with Jaime about shameless moochers, he logged off the server. “Here’s a deal for you, good only for today: I’ll put on the goggles if you promise not to solicit loans from people who can’t legally vote.”

Booster beamed. “Deal!” 

* * *

Here was the thing: Ted wasn’t the wide-eyed kid he’d been once, striving (and failing) to live up to Dan’s legacy. Ted excelled at a lot of things -- complex mathematics, mechanical engineering, computer programming, whipping up a mean spreadsheet -- but superheroics wasn’t one of them. He’d leapt eagerly into the world of crime-fighting, and the world of crime-fighting had spat him right back out with a new appreciation for lab work and a heart condition. Nobody except Booster had been devastated when he’d announced his retirement. Certainly no one in the Justice League had asked him to reconsider. 

Still, it wasn’t like he’d wept over it. At thirty-nine years old, he had a company to wrangle and inventions to invent, and there just wasn’t a place in his life for running around in spandex. When he’d gotten word that Jaime Reyes had been selected by the Scarab and it actually _worked_ for him, Ted had been relieved. It was a convenient excuse for giving up his emergency on-call status, and he’d settled happily into the role of mentor. At first it was because he felt responsible for this poor teenager, who hadn’t asked for powers or wanted the duty of being the Blue Beetle, but soon it had become about something more. Jaime was disgustingly lovable, and some nights Ted lay awake in bed, wracking his brains for gadgets that would keep the kid safer. He might have made for a terrible hero, but Jaime would be something special someday. 

Which was why it was doubly absurd that Booster had strong-armed _him_ into dusting off the Bug and squeezing himself into the azure pajamas. (They still fit and were even a tad loose, a fact that Ted was prepared to milk for all it was worth the next time Mel got on his case about sneaking a bagel at shareholder meetings.) Within the hour they were on their way to the projected location of the big bad of the day, and Booster gave him the usual rundown: mad scientist, world domination, dangerous bulletproof robot, etcetera etcetera. 

“I still can’t believe you guys went with ‘The Justice Corps’,” Ted said, flicking off the Bug’s fog lights as they descended from the cloud cover over Gotham. “It sounds like a cheap Chinese knock-off. That has to be some kind of copyright infringement.” 

“Max’s lawyers didn’t raise any objections. We’re good.” 

“Until you get slapped with a lawsuit from the Justice League _and_ the Guardians of the Universe.”

“Well, you refused to join the team, so you don’t get a say in what we call ourselves,” Booster retorted.

“I didn’t join the team because I’m retired. Oh, there’s Beatriz. Hit the comm switch, would you, Boost? I need to know where she wants me to land.”

Ted didn’t have to turn his head to know that Booster was smirking at him. “So you kept our comm frequency? That doesn’t sound like the behavior of a respectable retiree.” 

“I invented those comms. Don’t let it get to your head.” 

Bea, the appointed leader of this motley new team, directed them toward a busy city block in Gotham’s upscale market district. Ted could see plumes of smoke rising from a few empty, burned-out cars, but other than that, the crowd in the street seemed reasonably calm. Gothamites tended to be a sturdy breed of people -- you had to be when there was a non-zero chance that your coffee break would be interrupted by some putz with homicidal tendencies and a stupid themed gimmick. 

Speaking of which. . . . . 

“Bea, did anyone let Batman know about this? This is kind of his turf.”

“Are you kidding?” Fire exclaimed. “We’re trying to make a name for ourselves here! The last thing we need is him swooping in to steal our win away from us. Booster, I need you. We’re trying to herd the android into a more defensible area, and it has lasers. Strong ones. Beetle, can you work crowd control? The cops aren’t out yet, and it’s getting ugly down there.” 

Ted located a suitable patch of airspace over the crowd and set course for it, cranking open the front hatch. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.” 

Booster took a second to make sure his hair was coiffed and camera-ready before diving out the hatch. Ted watched the blur of gold zip around the side of a skyscraper and then set the Bug on hover mode. “Well, old girl,” he muttered, tugging his cowl and goggles into place, “looks like we’re ignoring doctor’s orders today.” 

Although Ted would rather eat paint than admit it, it _was_ exhilarating to leap into the air on his trusty skywire, the world a marvelous whirl of color and sound as the distant figures below grew larger and more distinct. 

Some enterprising soul had started to throw up hasty barricades, but the crowd was bottlenecked between one block and the next as people fled the nearby shops. The line of congested cars and buses were pushing through the street stubbornly, and although Ted couldn’t blame them for wanting to get the hell out of Dodge, it was creating the potential for someone to get seriously hurt if the crowd started panicking. From his vantage point, he took a quick note of the way the nearest alleys intersected before diving into the fray. 

Ted couldn’t exactly lay claim to being an imposing authority figure, but a guy dangling from a giant coleoptera-shaped airship tended to get attention. Tapping into the Bug’s loudspeaker, he began the task of redirecting the crowd into the alleyways, eventually aided by the arrival of the local police. With the crowd density thinned back to acceptable levels, Ted focused on the few looky loos who wanted to stay and watch the show. 

“C’mon, guys,” he said, shooing a group of teenagers away from the wreckage. “It’s an active situation and it’s not safe. You can check out the footage on the news tonight.”

There was the expected grumbling, but one kid narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. “Wait a sec, which one are you?”

The blonde next to him jabbed him in the side. “Are you dumb, Chad? That’s the Blue Beetle.”

The guy scowled, elbowing her right back. “How was I supposed to know? I thought Blue Beetle had wings. And he doesn’t look like such a pussy on TV.”

Wow, rude. 

A plume of green flame streaked overhead, and Fire’s voice rang in his ear. “Shake a leg, Beetle! We’ve pushed the robot toward the southeast corner of the block. There’s a park there. Fewer buildings. We need you, pronto.”

After making sure that his impolite stragglers had crossed the barricade, Ted hopped on the skywire and cranked himself back into the Bug, following Fire’s trail to a large civic park. He could see Guy leading a one-man assault on the android directly, though it didn’t seem to have much of an effect -- it appeared to have some kind of energy shield that was blocking the Lantern ring, in addition to the red lasers it was spitting at everyone. Ice and Booster were weaving around them, distracting the android from zeroing in on Guy, but they didn’t seem able to do much more than play keepaway. 

Fire appeared abruptly in front of Ted, floating next to one of the Bug’s round windows. “Run some scans, would you? I want to know what this thing is made of. We haven’t been able to put a dent in it.” 

“One Polaroid from the forward scanners, coming up.” Ted waited impatiently for the main computer to spit out its results. He hadn’t forgotten how little he enjoyed running analyses in active combat; the longer his equipment took, the more dangerous the situation became for any teammates. Those lasers were no joke. Through the window, he could see them tearing into concrete like it was cotton. The panel beeped, and Ted hurried to make sense of what sparse results the long-range scanners could give him. He reached out to toggle the display onto the wide screen, but his hands had gone unsteady, and it took him two tries to get it right. 

_God, I’m out of practice._

Guy hollered. Ted jerked his gaze away from the keyboard long enough to see the android tag Booster and Ice, beams driving into the ground and blowing superheated rubble across the grass. Ted’s breath caught, horrified, but Tora and Booster promptly emerged from the debris cloud, encased in Booster’s shield. 

“Crap, are you guys okay?”

Booster’s voice crackled in his ear reassuringly. “All good, Blue.”

“Hurry it up,” Guy snapped.

“Okay. Okay. Tin Man here is giving off a ton of energy. Probably solar-powered, because I’m not seeing any internal convection coils. I can’t give you an exact composition without a core sample, but I don’t think it’s invulnerable, since it would make that kind of heavy shielding redundant.” He rubbed his knuckles against eyes that had suddenly gone blurry. “Ice, if I brought down the shield, could you freeze the battery casing? Thick enough ice might cut off the direct sunlight long enough to drain the power reserves and prevent it from recharging. Judging from the thermal scans, the battery compartment is located where the left shoulder blade would be.”

“I can do that,” Ice said. 

“You’d have to sustain it,” Ted warned her. “There’s no telling what the battery life is like.” 

“We could drop the android in that pond. Then Ice could freeze the whole thing,” Booster suggested. 

“Boost, you never cease to amaze me. I like his plan, Fire -- if there are any gaps or flaws in the casing, flooding them with water would increase the odds of breaking internal mechanisms when the ice expands.”

“Good idea,” Fire said. “Color me impressed.”

“Sure, you’re all frickin’ geniuses. What about the shield, smarty?” Guy demanded, blocking a laser blast with a giant green tennis racket.

“The shield seems to be ionized plasma, or at least something very similar.” Ionized plasma would require an intense amount of heat before its molecular structure began to break down, and they certainly had heat on hand. Adding enough pressure would be the sticking point. “Bea, I’ve had a thought: what’s your projectile range these days?”

“Thirty-two feet is my best. Any further and the heat starts to wane.” 

Ted pulled up the weapons array panel, flicking through the settings. “To break this kind of field, we need intense heat and intense pressure. If I get into position directly above Tin Man, I can use the Bug’s compressed air blaster while you concentrate your fire into the airflow.”

Booster laughed delightedly. “You’re making a giant flamethrower!” 

Ted grinned. “That’s the idea.”

“Sounds like a plan to me, baby,” Fire declared. “Booster, Ice, keep this sucker occupied until we’re ready and then get the hell out of the way. Gardner, get ready to grab the robot and dump him in the pond as soon as those shields are down. Booster, you’ll fly Ice over to the pond so she can do her thing. Everyone got it?”

The Bug’s aft rudders folded out as she began a rapid ascent, Fire streaking alongside. Cold sweat was gathering, tacky, on Ted’s forehead and upper lip; he swiped it away impatiently. Cripes, he really _was_ out of practice if a little G-force was getting to him. 

Having reached the correct height, he steadied the ship and released the safety locks, dropping the air blaster from the Bug’s belly. After double-checking to make sure everyone was in position, he keyed in a command for a sustained burst that could sweep an elephant off its feet. “Fire in the hole!” He hit the release, and the sky lit up with a spectacular column of green flame. 

Fire kept up her end of the bargain, burning so fiercely that Ted could hardly look at her even through two layers UV-tinted plexiglass. Ted upped the pressure slowly, not wanting to cause more collateral damage than necessary, and within a minute, a flurry of cheers chimed over the comm. 

“Shields are down!” Booster crowed. “It worked! Ice, you’re up.”

Fire cut off her flame, looking a little winded, but she shot Ted a wink and dove down to rejoin the fight on the ground.

“As soon as I let up the pressure, Tin Man’s gonna be mad, guys,” Ted warned. “You’ll need to get in fast and -- _uh!_ \-----” He lurched forward, muffling a gasp in his fist. Something had reached inside his chest, squeezing hard, like it intended to rip his heart out Indiana-Jones-style. For a second, he was afraid he might barf all over his redesigned console. Blood pounded in his ears.

 _Oh, no. No, no no, not_ **_now_** **.**

Swallowing hard, he groped for the controls and managed to shut off the compressed air. His windows lit up with a barrage of red lights as the android took advantage of the chance for revenge. 

“Bug Butt,” Guy barked, “you drunk in there? Move it!” He broke off with a grunt, and Fire had started shouting. 

Ted’s chest seized again, a deep cramp under his sternum that left him dizzy and sick. He had to go to ground, fight be damned. If he didn’t land the Bug now, gravity was going to pick somewhere to land it for him, possibly on top of his friends. Ted tried to push past the crushing, pulsing pain to get out of the line of fire, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. His hands had become slow, clumsy. They slipped off the controls, and he couldn’t seem to lift them to put them back. All he could do was slump over the side of the chair and hyperventilate. 

“----at’s going on? Beetle, pull up!”

“Hey! Beetle!” Guy sounded almost worried, and that’s when Ted realized that he was really in trouble. 

There was an ear-splitting crash, and the Bug rocked with the force of a collision. Only the sensor-locked harness prevented Ted from being thrown through the window like a ragdoll. The Bug shuddered and wailed, her cabin rapidly filling with oily smoke. 

Ted felt the ship groaning around him while he sat there uselessly, gasping, alarms shrieking as the rear engine sputtered and then failed. Freefall was a disorienting spiral, the wind buffeting hard on all sides. He’d built in failsafes for this. Why weren’t they coming on? Why----

“Ted!”

The harness dug into his sides as the Bug overturned, loose tools and instruments clattering onto the ceiling. Another wave of nausea crested as he dangled upside down, his vision narrowing to a pinprick. Oh, _hell_. Oh, hell, he was going to pass out.

The last thing Ted heard was a choir of voices yelling at him before the airship abruptly righted herself and his head slammed against the console. 

* * *

“Mr. Kord? Mr. Kord, can you hear me? If you can, please open your eyes.” 

The voice was unfamiliar, the tone somehow both patient and insistent. Ted kept his eyes shut for a moment longer, taking stock of himself the way he usually did when waking up from a spell of unconsciousness. (And really, it was a crying shame that he had a whole systems process for rebooting after being knocked out. He ought to have incorporated a helmet into his costume ages ago.) 

His limbs were all present and accounted for, though he had a terrible headache and his whole torso felt bruised from collarbones to belly button. His costume was gone, and he was mostly naked, though there was the scratchy weight of a blanket tucked over his legs and lap. A monitor was beeping; something was hissing softly. There was an unmistakable hospital smell in the air: sterilizing solutions, bleach, and piped-in oxygen. 

Great. 

Ted peeled apart his eyelids. The lights were too bright, but he could still make out the curtained partition and its other two occupants: a young man in nurse’s scrubs and a middle-aged woman with a buzzcut and a white coat. 

The woman smiled at him when their eyes met. She had a thin, severe face, and the badge clipped to her chest was straighter than a slide-rule. “Good morning, Mr. Kord. You’re at Mercy General Hospital in Gotham, and today is Friday, May 17th. My name is Dr. Muthuraja.”

Speaking felt like it might take an awful amount of effort. Ted managed a nod, wincing when the movement jarred his head in a particularly horrible way. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Booster’s favorite bomber jacket folded over the back of a chair. 

“Are you in pain? Can you tell me where the pain is? Deshawn, please bring Mr. Kord some ice chips. Mr. Kord, lift your right hand and point to where you’re experiencing pain.” 

Ted obeyed, and the next few minutes were a bit of a blur. Someone lowered the lights and another nurse came in to inject something into the IV port in his hand. After a while Nurse Deshawn returned with the ice chips and helped Ted slip one into his mouth, which he realized felt bruised and raw, and as dry as the Sahara. The cold worked its magic, and Dr. Muthuraja pulled up a chair to sit next to him. 

“How’s your pain? Better?’

His temples still twinged if he even thought about shifting position, but the overall throbbing had quieted to a dull ache. Ted made a flapping gesture with his hand, hoping it conveyed gratitude. 

“Do you remember coming to the hospital?”

“No,” Ted finally managed. He sounded like a frog that chain-smoked and drank nothing but Black Velvet. 

“You were brought to us by ambulance three hours ago,” Dr. Muthuraja began, brisk but sympathetic. “You suffered a cardiac event that resulted in an accident. Fortunately, you were wearing your seatbelt, but you did sustain some injuries and lost consciousness, and you were intubated on scene. After your arrival in the emergency room, you had a minor episode of arrhythmia, but you’ve stabilized quite nicely.” 

“Nuh?”

“You had a heart attack, Mr. Kord.” 

_Another one_. Ted swallowed thickly. His head felt stuffed, and it all seemed unreal. Dimly, he knew he ought to be panicking, but he was too tired and sore for a nervous breakdown right now. 

Maybe later. 

He un-stuck his tongue from the bottom of his mouth and said, with some difficulty, “‘Kay. Dunno what to do with that.” 

The nurse re-taping his IV gave his arm a commiserating sort of pat. _There, there_. 

“We can discuss your options later,” the doctor replied. “There are some tests I’d like to run before we consider a treatment plan, and we need a clearer picture of your cardiac history. For the moment, we’re passively monitoring until we have an available bed for you, so sleep if you can, but I’d prefer that you not eat or drink until we rule a few things out. The ice chips are fine.”

That detail poked the tiny corner of Ted’s mind that was still working on a full battery. “‘Cause I need surgery?”

“We won’t know whether this is an isolated incident or something that will need more immediate intervention until we run some tests. It’s just a precaution at this point. I like to keep all of our options open.” 

After a little more back-and-forth with the nurse, Dr. Muthuraja left; once he’d pointed out the call button, Nurse Deshawn did too. Ted drifted for a while, absently listening to the muted thrum of a busy hospital. He couldn’t focus on anything more complex than the steady drip of the IV bag, thoughts sliding out of his brain before they could really register. He couldn’t sleep either, a sense of sharp unease startling him back awake every time he started to slide into unconsciousness.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the long curtains were yanked apart, fluorescent light and noise from the larger room spilling in. 

“You’re awake!” Booster exclaimed. He was wearing civvies, and his hair was damp and unstyled. A big bruise darkened one side of his face and he looked pale beneath his tan, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.

A wave of relief swept over Ted. He tried to grin, but he must not have been making the face he meant to make, because Booster suddenly looked sort of funny. 

“You’re on the good drugs, huh?” he said. 

“Mmmm.”

There was a backpack slung over Booster’s shoulder; he slipped it off, hooking his other hand under the chair to drag it closer to Ted’s cot. He sat down, propping his elbows on the thin mattress. “How’re you feeling, Blue?”

“How many?” was all Ted’s exhausted brain could come up with in reply. 

Bless him, Booster knew what he meant. “Nobody got hurt but you. Long story short: you got tossed around a lot, but the safety kicked in and triggered the emergency brake and then Guy guided the Bug down, and Tora got really mad and froze the bot solid. You were right, it was solar-powered. The others are on clean-up duty right now.”

“‘Kay.” Ted took a breath through his mouth and winced when it scraped against his tender windpipe. With a familiar presence standing guard, he thought he might finally be able to rest. “Y’good?”

He felt a warm weight smooth back his hair -- Booster’s hand. “I’m good, man, seriously. Everyone’s good.” 

There were plenty of other questions Ted wanted answers to, but his eyelids kept slipping shut, like there were tiny barbells attached to them. 

“Ted?” 

“M’gonna sleep.”

Booster smiled at him, but it wasn’t a very good effort, and Ted would have told him so if he wasn’t already halfway to the land of nod. “Sure, that’s the idea. Sleep tight, bedbug.” 

Ted did. 

* * *

* * *


	2. Two

* * *

_TWO_

* * *

* * *

“Here’s a question for you, Deshawn: are there gargoyles on top of the hospital? I feel like there have to be. Gotham’s zoning bylaws must have some kind of provision that everything built within city limits has to look like a set-piece from a _Frankenstein_ stage play.”

Nurse Deshawn laughed. He had a nice laugh, genuine and hearty. It made Ted feel marginally better about having to be helped out of bed, the cool air rushing in around his bare legs and backside. “You know, I think you’re onto something. I’ll have to ask my wife. She’s the native Gothamite. Here, you’re a little unsteady, Ted. Hold on to me.” 

“God,” he groaned, clinging to the nurse’s arms as they shuffled toward the bathroom. “This is embarrassing.”

“Nah, man. This is nothing. You don’t even have a catheter in.” 

“Small mercies,” Ted grunted. He’d been itching to get out of bed, bored after a full day of doing nothing, and now he just wanted to lay down again. “It shouldn’t be this hard to walk ten feet.” 

“You had a heart attack and a mild concussion,” Deshawn reminded him. “You’re going to feel weak for a few days. And car accidents can take a lot out of the healthiest person, so have some patience with yourself.” 

As Ted was being settled back into bed, there was a light tap on his open door. 

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Dr. Muthuraja said. Her eyeglasses were hooked over her coat pocket, and she was carrying a small laptop computer. She pulled up a chair and sat, propping the laptop on her knees. “I’ve gotten the results back from your EKG, and things are looking clear enough that I’m going to discharge you soon, provided that all goes well overnight.” 

Ted raised his eyebrows at her, pulling aside the collar of his gown so Deshawn could reattach the lead electrodes to his chest. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ there.” 

The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’re not wrong, Mr. Kord.” 

“Ted, please. It seems inappropriate to be called by my last name when I’m not wearing pants.” 

Deshawn stifled a chuckle. 

“Ted, then,” the doctor said, smiling a little. “I’ve gotten your medical records transferred over from Chicago. This isn’t your first rodeo -- you have quite a history of heart problems. Your mother passed away from a stroke, correct?”

“That’s right.” Ted chewed on the inside of his cheek. “She was 42.” Only three years older than he was now.

Dr. Muthuraja put on her glasses and pecked a few lines on her keyboard. “I spoke with some colleagues, and I’m going to refer you to a cardiac specialist. I wanted to talk to you a little about your past diagnoses. I see you’ve had a number of echocardiograms, and possibly several cardiac events in the past. Did they explain your condition to you?” 

“They said it was aortic valve stenosis. I was told it was degenerative, and probably due to a birth defect.” 

“That’s likely, considering how young you are. AVS usually occurs in much older patients. You’ve implemented lifestyle changes, and I see that you’ve been put on anticoagulants, but I think it’s clear that this warrants a more aggressive approach.”

“You mean like surgery.”

“Most likely. Depending on the severity, there might be non-invasive procedures available for valve repair or replacement---” 

“Replacement?” Ted blurted, alarmed. 

Dr. Murthuraja touched his arm lightly. “I don’t want to scare you, but with your history, this is very serious, Ted. This is something that a specialist will have to confirm, but I suspect that non-intervention is no longer a safe option for you. The longer your condition goes untreated, the higher the chance of damaging your heart beyond repair. If the valve isn’t working, it could cause your left ventricle to become enlarged to compensate, and that can lead to massive heart failure. If you were to go into heart failure, you would be facing the prospect of a transplant.”

“God.” 

Having dropped that bombshell, Dr. Muthuraja was whisked away by the beep of her pager. She left Ted with instructions to rest and not to worry -- _right_ \-- and promised to print out some information and resources for him before he was discharged. 

“Well, my dreams of becoming a world-class flamenco dancer just got flushed down the toilet.” 

“Working here, I hear a lot of bad news,” Deshawn said, placing the call button where Ted could easily reach it. “That isn’t the worst I’ve heard, but I’m sorry all the same.”

“Thanks,” Ted said. After the nurse left, he sat up, fiddling with the leads while he considered this new wrinkle. 

The thing was, after his first diagnosis, he’d been _good_. He’d done exactly what his doctor had told him to do. He’d hung up his Blue Beetle togs and handed the reins over to Jaime. He’d taken cooking classes to learn how to make his own low-sodium, low-cholesterol meals instead of eating out all the time. He’d taken his medications religiously. He’d kept hydrated. He’d made an effort (with varying results) to go to bed at more regular hours. He’d started a morning routine of calisthenics and even attended the occasional light yoga session with Mel. He was at the lowest weight he’d been at for years. 

Maybe he hadn’t stopped drinking coffee or beer, but a man had to put his foot down _somewhere_. 

In any case, evidently being good wasn’t enough. 

Ted didn’t particularly want to die. He always seemed to escape it by the skin of his teeth, but the specter of death had dogged him all his life: the stroke that had taken Mom, the presumed death of his batshit crazy uncle, Dan’s death at the hands of said batshit crazy uncle, the Bialyan mind-control that put him into a coma, the heart attacks _that he hadn’t even noticed he was having_ , Doomsday using his head as a battering ram and putting him into another coma. . . . .

And now his heart was crapping out on him, for real. 

Who could blame him if he threw up his hands and gave up? 

Well, a lot of people, probably. Namely Booster, who was currently shouldering his way through the door with a cardboard box, his cell phone held against his ear with one shoulder as he argued with whoever was on the other end. Seeing Ted awake, he flashed a grin and put the box down on Ted’s lap before cutting off the call with a brisk, overly-cheerful “Okay, bye!” and hanging up. 

“Who was that? And what’s this?” Ted asked, opening the box. If Booster didn’t want him to open it, he shouldn’t have put it within reach. 

“That was Bea. And that’s stuff for you to do, so you don’t go stir-crazy and start taking expensive medical equipment apart.”

“As if I would,” Ted sniffed. He uncovered a stack of well-thumbed novels -- mindless spy thrillers, exactly the sort of thing he liked to read when he wasn’t feeling well -- a few sudoku books, and some crossword puzzles, along with a blank notebook, graph paper, and a package of colored pens. “Thanks, buddy.” 

“No problem. That last one’s from Tora.” 

“Which one?” Ted lifted out the graph paper and found another book. Judging by the pastel flower-bedecked cover, it was definitely from Tora’s expansive romance novel collection. Not that that Ted was opposed to romance novels, but this one was unlikely to feature any descriptions of luridly heaving breasts. If the text on the back was any indication, it would instead feature a lot of hand-holding and heartwarming lessons about the redemptive power of love. And kittens.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing saucy in there. Wouldn’t want you to get too excited, what with the heart and all.” 

“How thoughtful,” Ted said dryly. 

There was a knock on the door. An orderly had arrived with Ted’s lunch: a sliver of chicken and a lump of boiled quinoa and brown rice with no added salt, garnished with an occasional limp, squeaky leek. Even Booster wrinkled his nose at it, and he’d grown up eating things that weren’t technically food. 

“So what did Bea say?” Ted asked, reluctantly settling the tray in his lap. “Did they catch Mr. Mad Scientist?”

“They’re still looking, but the last lead was that he’s heading south out of the city. If he doesn’t turn up in a few more hours, Bea’s thinking of calling in some fliers to help cover more territory.”

“You should be there with them, if they need fliers,” Ted said. The rice was both gummy and crunchy, and everything had an inexplicable aftertaste of sauerkraut. It was almost interesting, in the way that a trainwreck was interesting. “That android was something else, and if he has more of them. . . .”

“It’s fine,” Booster said, a little too quickly. 

Ted looked at him suspiciously. “Did Bea ask you come with them? You can go, Booster. Doc says I’ll be discharged soon anyway -- maybe tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I’ll catch a flight back home. There’s no reason for you to stay.” 

“I want to stay.” Booster was frowning now, hard enough to bring out the slight wrinkles around his eyes that he stubbornly insisted didn’t exist. “Are they sure they should let you go so soon?”

“There’s not anything else that they can do for me right now.” Ted hesitated before swiftly deciding not to mention Dr. Muthuraja’s visit. Not yet. There was no need to upset anyone else unnecessarily until he got solid confirmation. “I’ll need to go see a different heart specialist once I get back to Chicago. They’re mostly just keeping me until tomorrow because of the knock on the noggin. Really, Booster, you might as well go help the team.” 

“I can help from here, with you.”

“Sure, because I really helped before. I did a spectacular job burning out the Bug’s brakes, and probably the flight stabilizers too.” He groaned then, struck with a bolt of realization. “Damn, a new rear engine is going to be so expensive. Is it too late to choose the heart attack?"

“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” Booster snapped, suddenly tense. “We thought you were _dead_.”

Ted shut his mouth. It didn’t seem appropriate to apologize, because he certainly hadn’t put himself into cardiac arrest on purpose, but he was sorry that everyone had been forced to watch it. People got injured in the line of duty -- it was part and parcel of the job -- but it was never easy to see, and he knew how sick and helpless he always felt when a teammate went down during a fight.

“Well, I’m not,” he said, for a lack of anything better to say. “I’m alive and eating quinoa.” He paused, weighing his chances of further pissing off his pal against getting him to stop looking so alarmingly serious. “I’m not sure I got the better end of the deal.”

To his relief, Booster laughed; when he looked at Ted again, his smile fit more naturally on his face. 

***

They whiled away a pleasant afternoon. Ted was working his way through his second spy novel, while Booster had selected Tora’s book. He’d claimed it was so he could make fun of it, but, much to his amusement, Ted had noticed that Booster’s derisive comments had petered off awfully fast. He seemed absorbed in it now. 

When Nurse Deshawn showed up to check the dressing on Ted’s forehead and escort him to the bathroom again, Booster stood up, draping his book over the arm of his chair. “I’m gonna get some food from the cafeteria. You want anything, man?”

“Lots of things, but I can’t have any of them,” Ted sighed, and he gave Booster a little wave as he left.

“Good answer,” Deshawn said, grinning, as he watched Ted sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed. Standing up was a lot easier this time, and his legs felt steadier -- maybe he really would be able to go home tomorrow. “The charge nurse doesn’t take kindly to smugglers.”

“I bet there’s a black market for cheeseburgers here.”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe. Once Maureen caught a relative of a diabetic patient with three bags of jellybeans stuffed in her bra.” 

After returning to bed, Ted decided that he was done with reading. A few ideas about a new engine for the Bug had begun to rattle around his brain, and he got up to pull out the graph paper and notebook, hoping to sketch out some concepts before he forgot them. Deshawn left him to it, but a second later he popped back around the doorjamb. “Heads up -- you’ve got a visitor coming.”

Ted hastily climbed back under the sheet and managed to restore his modesty before his visitor appeared in the doorway, and thank God for that. 

“Barb!” 

“Hi, Beeb. Fancy seeing you here.” Barbara Gordon wheeled into his room, looking spiffy in a tailored pantsuit and balancing a vase of blue foxglove on her lap. 

“What are you doing outside your lair? Are those for little ol’ me?”

“No, they’re for your nurse,” she said, and she parked alongside the bed to peck his cheek. Ted felt himself blush -- he couldn’t help it, it was Babs -- and happily accepted the proffered vase. His bedside tray was already crowded with a wilting bouquet and a smiley-face balloon courtesy of Tora, but Ted placed the foxglove in a spot of high honor. (Now he could say that Oracle had bought him _flowers_. He’d bet that Superman couldn’t say that.)

Ted sat back against the pillows. Barbara was giving him a laser-sharp, evaluating look from behind her glasses. “So, are you here to tell me ‘I told you so’?” he asked.

“Would I be that petty, Ted?”

“I’m thinking yes.” 

“Then I told you so. I told you that your specialist wasn’t being aggressive enough and that you needed a second opinion. And before you bring it up, I didn’t hack into your medical records to find out you were here. I heard it from Dinah, who had it from Booster, so you can blame either one of them.” 

“The grapevine’s in full swing, huh?” Ted sighed. 

She eyeballed him harder, in that deeply analytical way that was a tad disturbing. “You look like you’re feeling better.” 

“Aw, were you worried, Rolly? I knew you loved me.”

“Of course. Who else would send me _Wired_ articles at three a.m.?” 

Ted meant to continue their banter with a witty rejoinder, but what came out of his mouth was, “I have to get surgery.” 

Barbara’s smile faded. 

Ted inhaled through his nose, regretting that he’d said anything, but it was too late now. “At least, I think I have to have it. I won’t know for sure until I get to a specialist at home. But the doctors here don’t seem to think it looks good.” He repeated what Dr. Muthuraja had told him as Barbara listened with patient concern, like the excellent friend she was. When he finally wound to a halt, she reached out to take his hand, lacing their fingers together. 

“I’m so sorry, Ted. Are you okay?”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but right now I think I’m still in shock. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. I don’t exactly relish the thought of an operation and spending weeks in recovery, and God knows what kind of complications could crop up. I hate hospitals.”

Something painful rippled across Barbara’s face, her gaze suddenly faraway. “Look, you’ll get through it. Sometimes awful things happen to us and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I’m not saying you ought to be happy about this, but sometimes these events can be. . . . illuminating, if we let them be. Sometimes they lead to reassessment.” 

Ted felt a little ashamed of himself. He was alive, with good medical care on hand, and there were plenty of others who couldn’t say the same. He squeezed her hand. “I’m definitely reassessing the number of fries I’ve eaten.”

She snorted, but he was glad to see that her smile had returned. “I realize I’m speaking for myself here, but when everything goes to hell, it helps to focus on the things you can change. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help, okay? It’s so much easier when you allow yourself to lean on the people who love you.” 

Something rustled in the doorway. Ted glanced up to see Booster, who was messing with the shopping bag hooked over his arm. 

Barbara pulled away, twisting around to look over her shoulder. “Hi, Booster.” 

“Hey,” Booster said, unsmiling. He crossed the room to drop into his chair, stretching out his long legs and folding his arms over his chest. 

An awkward silence descended. 

Her lips quirking into a half-smile, Barbara patted Ted’s chest. “Keep that thing ticking, okay, Beeb? I’d better go. Give me a ring when you’re up to it -- I’ve got some tech for you that Robin stole from an arms dealer. I thought you’d like to take it apart and tell us how it works it when you’re feeling better. It’s some kind of hard light shield, but that’s as far as he’s gotten.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Ted said happily, because Barbara’s friends seemed to acquire the most interesting supervillain tech. It wasn’t until Barbara had already wheeled herself to the door that he thought to ask, “Wait, Batman hasn’t taken a look at it?”

Barbara shrugged. “Long story, but Robin doesn’t really want to bother him with it right now. Besides, he has a giant geek crush on you, so I told him you’d help him out. From what we can tell, it seems to be modeled after your tech, Booster.”

“Wowzer,” Booster said, with palpable sarcasm. He started digging into the bag at his feet, clearly done with the conversation. 

“Thanks for the flowers,” Ted told her, waving. She left, and he waited until he heard the elevator door down the hall ding before he demanded, “What’s your deal with Barbara?” 

Booster looked offended at being called out, which Ted thought was awfully rich of him. “What deal? There’s no deal. There’s never been a deal. She’s great.”

“Literally thirty seconds ago you were being an ass to her.” 

“Foxgloves are your favorite flower,” Booster said, sounding accusatory. 

Ted was nonplussed. “Yes?”

Booster’s nostrils flared. “Because they remind you of the Doomsday Machine from _Star Trek_.”

“I’m aware,” Ted said slowly. Slumping back into his chair with a loud huff, Booster opened a packet of cashews and shoved a whole fistful into his mouth. Ted gave up on getting an explanation, flicking on the television to drown out the sounds of angry chewing. 

By the second episode of _Jeopardy_ , Booster seemed to have untwisted his panties. Ted was willing to chalk the grumpiness up to low blood sugar, and they spent the evening heckling Alex Trebek until visiting hours ended and the charge nurse kicked Booster out. 

***

Three days after Ted had returned to Chicago, Mel dropped by his house in Highland Park with a contraband bagel and an armful of paperwork. 

“Carrot and the stick,” he grumbled, but he was already digging eagerly into the bakery bag. It was from his favorite coffee shop, the one across the street from the office, and he unearthed a glorious sourdough bagel with lox and caraway seeds. “Bless you from the depths of my Jewish soul, Melody Case.”

“Bless you for being so cheap to bribe. And welcome home.” Mel shoved his feet off the couch and sat down, clearing a space on the cluttered coffee table for the papers and file folders. Ted reluctantly unearthed himself from his nest of pillows and sat up, scraping his bangs out of his face. 

“Are you wearing a Snuggie?”

“I know it makes me irresistible to women, but try to restrain yourself. Have some dignity.”

“I didn’t realize you knew that word,” Mel said dryly. “And you look like you’re trying to meld with the couch. Have you _seen_ sunlight in the last week?” In an act of vice-presidential wizardry, she produced a number of neat stacks, organized by subject matter and, no doubt, arranged in order of importance. “Here, these two piles are assorted progress reports from R&D that need a final sign-off, this one’s a budget approval request from marketing, those are stock updates, and these are general stats that you should look over before the next board meeting. If you’re bored of daytime TV, I’ve got some press releases for you too.” 

“You have my eternal gratitude.” It was only a little bit sarcastic. The stacks were a lot smaller than he’d been expecting, so Mel had obviously shouldered the extra work for him. “Really, though, thank you. Has your minion been helping you with the load?”

“You know Gene hates it when you call him that.”

“Are you kidding? He loves it.” 

“When he finally snaps and you get served with a harassment suit, don’t come crying to me, Ted. You can explain that to Legal on your own. Is that a juice box? Do you have fruit punch?”

“In the fridge.” 

Mel returned from the kitchen with her juice box, toed off her green pumps with a sigh, and put her stockinged feet up on the coffee table. While Ted worked his way through his papers, she watched the infomercial channel and provided color commentary. She elbowed him when an advertisement for a grabbing claw stick came on. “Maybe you ought to buy one so you can pick up all your filth without having to leave the couch.” 

Despite himself (and despite the fact that Mel had seen Ted in vastly more compromising positions), Ted actually did feel embarrassed by the squalor surrounding his blanket nest, to say nothing of his own disheveled person. 

Maybe he _had_ been a little depressed lately. 

For a while it was quiet except for the rustling of papers and D-list television actors attempting to sound enthusiastic about vegetable spiralizers. “Did Marketing get a new accountant?” Ted asked, frowning as he found a third error in the department budget request. “Phyllis isn’t usually this sloppy.” 

Mel gave him an incredulous look. “Ted, Phyllis retired three years ago. You were at her retirement party. You made a speech. You bought her a cake from Magnolia’s.” 

Ted thought for a moment. “It was tiramisu buttercream, right?” 

“I can’t believe you.” 

“What? It was a good cake. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that Not-Phyllis needs to brush up on their basic arithmetic.” 

“Actually, the point is that you’re spending too much time in the labs with Takamoto and not enough time with the rest of your staff. If you’d been at work like you were supposed to be, you wouldn’t have been in Gotham getting blown up. And you know what else?”

Ted scribbled his signature on a requisition form. “I haven’t the foggiest. But by all means, continue this airing of grievances.” 

“I really don’t appreciate finding out from Angie that you’ve disappeared from your office and then getting a call from a hospital 300 miles away to tell me that you’re unconscious again because you’re still pretending that you’re a twenty-year-old with no responsibilities and who doesn’t have an _actively life-threatening medical condition_.” 

Ted blinked, looking up from his papers. “Wait, are you mad at me?”

“ _Yes._ ” 

Mel’s jaw was tight, her shoulders tense under the crisp lines of her blouse. For the first time, Ted guiltily noticed how tired she looked; he glanced down to check her hands and saw that the edges of her fingernails were jagged. She bit them compulsively when she was stressed. 

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said quietly. “It was impulsive.”

“You, being impulsive?” She picked at the bed of one of her thumbnails. “You’re supposed to be done with this, Ted.” 

“They needed me.” 

“If you keep saying yes, they’ll keep needing you.”

Ted ruefully had to admit to himself that he didn’t have any defense for that. It was true. He’d always been a pushover, especially where his friends were concerned. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore,” he said wryly. “I won’t be taking the Bug out again.”

“No, now I’ll just be able to worry about something else.” Mel sighed heavily, leaning her head back against the couch. “I was just starting to get used to not having to worry about you, you know.” She rubbed her forehead, brushing back her stylish blond fringe. “If I’m being honest, it’s not just that. I called Randall yesterday.”

Ted bit his lip. “Mel.”

“I know, I know. I just wanted to hear how Livy was doing at summer camp, that’s all. But Randall and I got in a fight over something stupid, like we always do, and I didn’t even get anything useful out of him. I’ve been angry at myself all day.”

Frankly, Ted thought Randall could take a long walk off a short cliff, but Mel’s only access to Livy was through her ex. Mel loved that little girl like her own, and it was almost a shame that she and Randall hadn’t gotten married after all, if only for Mel to have the chance to get part-time custody. Now poor Livy was just a bargaining chip for her jackass father to hold over Mel. “I wish I had something poignant to say,” he said finally, “but you know my track record with relationships.” God, the last time he’d been in love -- really in love -- had been ages ago, with Tracy. He’d gotten a Christmas card from her last year, out of the blue. She was married to a chiropractor and had two kids.

Mel finished her juice box and started crumpling it up. “You know what? Falling in love is terrible and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. I should have just gone to law school.”

“You would have been a terrifying lawyer,” Ted agreed. 

On the television, some community theater reject was waxing poetic about the virtues of a motorized drain snake, and when she brightly remarked on the tool’s “specially-designed ability to pump the tightest passage,” Ted snorted juice out of his nose. That set him off into the first belly laugh he’d had in days, and his guffawing made _Mel_ start to laugh, and by the time they’d wound themselves down, they were both holding the stitches in their sides and groaning. 

“So,” Mel said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, “I think that’s enough paperwork for today. I should get back to the office before lunch. Do you need me to do a grocery run or anything before I go?”

“I’m good, thanks. Booster’ll be back soon anyway.” 

Mel took her feet off the coffee table and slipped her heels back on. “Shiny Shorts and his flying toaster are staying with you, huh? I thought he lived in DC now.”

“He does.” Ted shifted on the couch, groaning with relief as his back popped. “I got home from the airport and Booster was already here, with two suitcases and his panoply of hair products.”

“Hmm. And how’s that working out?”

Ted scowled, his earlier annoyance returning in a sudden rush. “You’re going to regret asking that.”

“Lay it on me.”

“I swear to everything that’s holy, I’m losing it, and it’s only the third day. He doesn’t want me to go to work, he doesn’t want me to cook, he doesn’t want me tinkering. He gives me the hairy eyeball every time I leave the couch. He wants to take my blood pressure every ten minutes. The microwave broke, and he bitched at me for fixing it. He tried to send Skeets with me into the _shower_.” Ted flung a dramatic arm over his eyes. “I banished that little bucket of bolts to the garage after the shower incident. I’ve only just convinced Booster that I won’t drop dead in the hour that he’s doing his run.”

“Is that where he is now?” Mel, damn her, wasn’t even trying not to laugh. 

Ted lowered his forearm enough to glare playfully at her. “You’d go nuts in five minutes if he did it to you.”

“He wouldn’t have to. I’m not famously bad at looking after myself.”

“That’s not fair. You’re the one who’s always nagging me about spending more time at the office!”

Mel’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “If you stopped ignoring your job in favor of running downstairs to play with the lab nerds, then I wouldn’t have to do any _nagging_ , Theodore.”

Fortuitously, Booster chose that moment to return, looking unfairly fresh in his matching gold jogging shorts and tank and clutching his usual post-run extra-large no-whip soy latte. He seemed startled to see Mel on the couch. “Oh, hi, Ms. Case!” 

“Hello to you too.” She turned her head to smirk at Ted. “Well, I think I can safely leave you now that Dr. Feelgood has arrived.” 

“No, I’m Booster,” said Booster, sounding confused.

Ted covered his eyes again and groaned. 

***

Dr. Whittacker was a highly-regarded cardiac specialist, and even though his bedside manner left a lot to be desired, Ted couldn’t fault him for his efficiency. Over the course of two days, he was poked and prodded and scanned and then scanned again, and at last he was sent home with the telephone number of St. Marceline’s Surgical Center and a thick brochure festooned with a cheerful cartoon heart and the title _So You’re Getting Aortic Valve Replacement Surgery!_

Ted pulled his car into the garage and parked next to Booster’s motorcycle, a freebie that he’d gotten out of a promotional gig with a dealership. Ted might have envied him for it if it weren’t such an eyesore. No self-respecting piece of machinery should feature both ape hangers _and_ oversized tires, to say nothing of the glittery gold paint job.

He opened the car door and spotted Skeets sitting on top of the deep freezer, nestled in between a pile of spare tires and a block engine, and looking very dour for a faceless robot. “Hey, Skeets.” 

“Hello, sir.” If Skeets’s voice chip was capable of emotional range, Ted knew it would be dripping with disdain.

“Still upset about the shower thing, eh?”

Skeets said nothing. 

“Look, I’m sorry for exiling you. I know that you were only following orders, but in my defense, I was naked and you have a camera function.” He unlocked the door that led into the house and held it open. “Will you please come in? It makes Booster sad when we fight.”

“If you insist,” Skeets said, but he seemed marginally less annoyed. He floated inside and then zipped off, undoubtedly to do a security sweep of the whole house. 

Booster was waiting for Ted in the kitchen, reading an issue of _Sports Illustrated_. Judging by the knotted tangle of yellow yarn on the table in front of him, he’d tried to crochet and given up. Tora was giving him lessons, but Booster’s excellent hand-eye coordination hadn’t been much help thus far. He looked up eagerly as soon as Ted came into the room. “Well? How’d it go? What did he say?”

Ted put the brochure down on top of the magazine, and Booster’s face fell. 

“Surgery?”

“Yup.” Ted pulled out and chair and sat down, tossing his keys and his other papers on the table. Booster picked up the brochure.

“It’s a birth defect, like my first doctor thought,” Ted explained. “My aortic valve didn’t grow at the same rate as the rest of my heart. It was fine when I was little, but as my heart grew, the valve became exponentially smaller in comparison. That limited the blood supply, and it’s why I started having problems as an adult. The valve opening has become too narrow, and it’s forcing other areas of the heart to work too hard to compensate, which ends up decreasing the overall capacity even more. So it needs to be fixed.” 

“Fixed how?” Booster asked warily.

“Well, they’ll put me under general anesthesia, and then they’ll remove the defective valve and implant a mechanical one, and then they’ll stitch me back up. That’s the basic gist.” 

Booster was making a face of fascinated horror. “They put it IN your heart? And they just leave it there?”

“That’s the idea.” 

“But why? Can’t they just take out your heart and fix it, or whatever, and then put it back in?” 

“. . . . No.”

“Hmph.” Booster flipped the brochure over, and a few seconds later he asked, “What’s a sternotomy?”

Ted winced. “Oh. That’s one part I’m not looking forward to. They have to crack open the breastbone in order to access the heart.” 

“They _what?!_ ”

“Apparently there are some non-invasive procedures they can do now -- microtools put through slits in the muscle -- but a mechanical replacement means opening up the chest cavity. That might change in a few years, considering how quickly the field is advancing. Hey, did you know that H. Milton was the first documented inventor of the sternotomy, way back in 1897? Almost nobody used it until 1957, after open heart surgery was proven to be successful, and then it became the standard. They used to use a bilateral anterior thoracotomy, which opens horizontally across the chest instead of vertically. They have grown-tissue or donor-tissue valves now too, but those have to be replaced due to degradation. The mechanical valve doesn’t. I’ve been reading up on it. It’s really quite a technical marvel, in its own way.” 

Booster had that look on his face, the glassy-eyed, overwhelmed look that he got when Ted rambled too much about string theory or why _Stargate Atlantis_ was inferior to _Battlestar Galactica_. “Is there a risk of you dying?”

“Of course there’s a risk. It’s heart surgery.” 

“Isn’t there something else they can do?” Booster asked plaintively. “A pill you can take? Something that doesn’t involve sawing you in half?”

“Booster, I literally used to fight crime, physically. You remember, you were there. I was at risk all the time. My chances with this are better, since nobody’s going to be shooting at me or trying to strangle me in an operating theater. At least, nobody should be. I’ll try not to piss off the staff beforehand.”

“I don’t like this,” Booster muttered. 

“I’m not exactly thrilled about it either, buddy.”

“Can you get a third opinion? There has to be a more . . . _civilized_ way to do this.” He shook the pamphlet for emphasis. 

“Not really. Welcome to twenty-first century medicine.” Ted got up and opened the fridge, pulling out the water pitcher and then hunting around in the dish cabinet for a clean glass. “I can’t believe I’m still thirsty. I had to drink about twelve Dixie cups of water so I could pee for the lab tests. You want some? Water, I mean, not urine.” 

Booster just stared at him. 

“What?”

“You’re calm,” Booster pointed out, sounding extremely suspicious. “You freaked out last time. You couldn’t go five minutes without mentioning how you had a heart condition. Why aren’t you freaking out?” 

Ted took a moment to think about it as he drank his water. It was undeniably true. He’d been a neurotic, anxious mess after his diagnosis, convinced that he’d die even younger than his mother had. “Honestly? It’s one thing to spend your whole life thinking you’re healthy only to find out that you’re not. It’s another to find out that a problem you already have is getting worse.” He put the pitcher back in the fridge and rejoined Booster at the table. “Before, I didn’t really understand what was wrong with me, and part of me didn’t want to know. Well, now I know. I know exactly what’s wrong, and I know exactly what it’ll take to fix it. It’s like. . . . it’s like repairing the Bug. The hard part is figuring out what’s not working. Making it work again is the easy part.”

Booster put the brochure back on the table, raking a hand through his hair. “Nothing about this looks _easy_ , Ted.” 

“When has anything in our lives been easy?”

“He makes a valid point, sir,” Skeets said as he drifted into the room. He scanned the kitchen, beeping softly, and then made himself comfortable inside the bread box, presumably assured that his security duties had been adequately discharged.

“I guess,” Booster conceded, but he didn’t sound too happy about it. 

Ted had always been a sucker for a pitiful face, and Booster’s pitiful face was particularly effective. “Hey,” he said, leaning over to nudge Booster’s arm with his shoulder, “you have your flight ring, right? What’d you say we go out once it’s dark? We can loop over the city, see the lights.”

Booster brightened -- he loved flying as much as Ted did, and he was always asking to go joyriding -- but almost immediately his smile dimmed. “Should you be doing that?”

“If driving through downtown traffic didn’t stop my heart, I don’t think this will,” Ted said, laughing. “It’s been over a week. We can go slow and keep the altitude low, and we don’t have to stay out long. I just thought it might be nice.”

For a moment, Booster looked like he might give in, but then he shook his head. “We’d better not.”

Ted tamped down firmly on his disappointment. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do anyway, and if Booster wasn’t feeling up to it, he wasn’t going to push. Still, it would have been nice to see Chicago’s lights laid out like the bulbs in a sprawling marquee, nothing keeping him tethered in the sky but a bone-deep trust that Booster wouldn’t drop him. “Okay,” he said. “You want to watch a movie?”

Booster got up from the table. “I should do laundry. You and Skeets can watch it.”

“The laundry can wait, can’t it? Come and sit with me for a few minutes.”

Booster shook his head again. “Go rest, and I’ll make dinner later.” 

“Boost---”

But Booster was already gone, jogging down the stairs to the laundry room. A minute later, Ted heard the washing machine start. He waited, but Booster didn’t come back up. 

“Ted, sir?”

Ted looked over at Skeets, who was poking out of the bread box. “Yeah?”

“According to my data banks, Booster has declined an opportunity to fly with you only 2% of the times offered. He has declined an invitation to watch a film with you only 8.8% of the times offered. The odds of him declining both within the same minute are infinitesimal. This is atypical behavior.”

“That’s one way to put it, buddy,” Ted sighed.

* * *

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I like shoving unsolicited comic recs at people, I’m going to take a minute to suggest checking out the original Blue Beetle run, which began after DC bought the character from Charlton Comics in the 80s. It’s collected in a Showcase Presents trade you can find on Amazon or at your local comic book shop, and it’s worth a read. The art is generally good, and while the plots are forgettable, gimmicky, bad-guy-of-the-week stuff, Ted is at his bravest and most sweetly sincere. His cast of supporting characters are fun, if underdeveloped, since it only ran for about two dozen issues. I'm particularly fond of Angie the secretary and Murray Takamoto, Ted’s brainy former roommate and a bigshot at STAR Labs. (Spoiler: Ted wheedles him into helping with a dubious experiment that gets Murray fired from his job. THANKS A LOT, TED.) Their friendship is charming, as is Ted’s paternal friendship with the chemist Jeremiah Duncan. There's also a somewhat hilarious subplot in which the gruff cop Lt. Fisher becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of Dan Garrett's disappearance and pops in on Ted every now and then to accuse him of murdering Dan. It's delightfully campy.
> 
> Melody is a sad case, imo, of a good character being weighed down by sexist comic book tropes. She starts out as an MJ-clone and undergoes some pretty bizarre personality changes because the writers didn’t seem to know what to do with her. (Quelle surprise.) At first she’s a free-spirited, wise-cracking scientist at Kord Omniversal, and then she’s a brilliant computer whiz, and then she’s suddenly Ted’s second-in-command who’s running his company? Also, she and Ted are banging. (DON’T BANG YOUR EMPLOYEES, TED. WHERE IS YOUR HR DIVISION??) Then Ted’s off doing his superhero stuff, and Mel becomes the stereotypical girlfriend who has no other personality traits than always being on his case about, y’know, doing his actual job and paying attention to her. Then, after Ted’s basically checked out of the relationship, Mel gets the hots for another employee and hires him as her assistant so she can bang him. (SERIOUSLY WHERE IS HR????) This makes Ted sad, but instead of taking his partner on an actual date and patching things up, he just kind of shrugs and decides that there's nothing he can do about it. Then Mel finds out the guy is married and apologizes to Ted, and then Ted tells her “nuts to you,” and the series abruptly ends. 
> 
> So, yeah, their relationship is a piping hot mess. The sad thing is, they had some very cute moments, but the writers didn’t know what to do with Mel apart from Obligatory Love Interest Relationship Drama, and neither she nor Ted came out of it looking too good. Still, the series is a lot of fun if you can tolerate the quirks of older comics, and it makes for a quick read with some lovely character moments in Ted’s early days as a hero. (Also, Ted’s dad is a huge asshole who doesn’t even send his son a birthday card. Boo.) 
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you want to chat about JLI or comics stuff, come say hi at hipsterdarcy on tumblr.


	3. Three

* * *

_THREE_

* * *

* * *

Almost two weeks to the day after The Incident, Ted went in for his preliminary exam. St. Marceline’s Surgical Center’s reputation as the premiere cardiovascular treatment center in the Midwest seemed like it hadn’t been overstated. He was suitably impressed by the cutting-edge medical technology on display, as well as the knowledgeability of the staff as he was evaluated. A date for the valve replacement operation was tentatively proposed for six weeks in the future, with a mandatory pre-op consultation with the head cardiac surgeon, Dr. Lemure, to be scheduled by the office as soon as they could find an available slot. 

Satisfied that everything had been set into motion and that his current situation was urgent but not _urgent_ , Ted returned home with a resolution to go on with life as normally as he could. After clearing it with his GP, he resumed working half-days at the office, returning home in the afternoons to rest or catch a lazy catnap -- or, when he could sneak down undetected to the house’s hidden sub-basement, to pick through the wreckage of the Bug. 

Guy and Kilowog (with much complaining on the former’s part) had kindly collected the various pieces of the Bug while Ted was still in the hospital; now that he was on his feet again, he was anxious to take account of all the damage. It wasn’t easy to be productive, though. Booster seemed to have developed a sixth sense that alerted him whenever Ted had spent more than two consecutive hours tinkering, and at that point he’d appear, like clockwork, and shoo Ted out of his workshop. Thankfully, he no longer seemed convinced that Ted was going to have a massive coronary the second that he was left unsupervised, but he was still fussy. 

Today, however, Ted was determined to get some real work done. Booster was on a mission with the Justice Corps, as the Dibneys had called in for some assistance with a case, and he would be gone for the whole day. He’d left Skeets to help Ted around the house, and after securing a promise that there would be no more voyeuristic bathroom shenanigans, Ted had agreed to the terms -- for one thing, it would keep Booster out of his hair, and for another, Skeets made an excellent mechanic’s assistant. 

Delighted by this stroke of luck, Ted hustled down to his lab. He assigned Skeets the job of tool-wrangler and internal scope, since the little droid was able to navigate the tight squeeze of the crushed maintenance shaft. Their goal for today was trying to determine whether the navigation panel had been blown out along with the engine, but Ted’s luck was rapidly dwindling. The whole rear end of the Bug was a mangled mess of rebar, wire, and smoke-damaged electronics. Making her flight-worthy again would require months of repair and refinishing. It would have been depressing if he hadn’t rebuilt his baby a half-dozen times already.

“You promised Booster that you would rest, sir. I am not convinced this can be categorized as ‘resting’,” Skeets observed, watching Ted dismantle a ruined section of the bulkhead with a handheld laser-cutter. 

“I don’t see why not. I’m lying down. I’m relatively stationary. You’re handing me the tools.”

“That is technically true, but. . . .” Skeets paused, his display screen blinking in the frenetic way it always did when he was interfacing with another computer system. “There’s a visitor at the door, Ted. Your security system has identified her as Dinah Laurel Lance.” 

“Canary?” Ted exclaimed. “What’s she doing all the way out here? GLaDOS, let her in and send her down.” He shut off the laser, listening idly as his security system disengaged and verbally directed his guest toward the concealed elevator in the hall closet. In a fit of boredom during his imprisonment on his couch, he’d upgraded GLaDOS’s voice chip to sound like Gilbert Gottfried. He chortled to himself as he imagined the look on Dinah’s face. After a minute, he heard the elevator ding, and Skeets flitted out to greet Canary. The maintenance port was too narrow to turn around, so Ted started worming his way out backwards, only just avoiding a painful collision with the hatch as he emerged.

Dinah had both her hands thrust in the pockets of her leather jacket as she gazed curiously around the workshop. Her eyebrows rose when she saw Ted. 

He wiped grease-streaked hands guiltily on his jeans. “This is a lovely surprise, Dinah. What brings you to _Chez_ Beetle?”

“I thought you were supposed to be recovering from a heart attack.” 

“I was handing Sir the tools, Ms. Canary,” said Skeets loyally. 

“Whatever.” She jingled a set of car keys. “Babs sent me to play courier. She said you had something for Robin?”

“Oh! Yeah, I do, just a sec.” Ted went into his storage room to retrieve the hard-light weapon that Robin had confiscated and was momentarily stymied by the piles of assorted tools and half-finished projects. “Crap, where did I put that?”

It took ten minutes to unearth the blaster shield. Ted carried it over to his work-bench to pack it up safely for transport while Dinah snooped around. 

“Who’s this?” she asked abruptly, pointing at one of the picture frames on Ted’s workbench. “He’s cute, in a tweedy professor sort of way.” 

Ted chuckled, sliding his goggles up into his hair. “That’s Dan Garrett.”

“Your mentor?”

“The very same.” The photo was a professional shot, so Professor Garrett was stiffly posed and suitably serious, but his glasses couldn’t entirely hide the adventurous twinkle in his eye. “I’d go to his office after class and bug him -- _heh_ \-- for stories about his digs, and he’d sit there and talk with me for hours, patient as anything. Dan was a real mensch. It’s been twenty years since he died, but I still miss him sometimes.”

“It never gets easier,” Dinah agreed, a sliver of something brittle in her voice. With a pang, Ted wondered if she was thinking of Ollie. He only had a moment to debate whether he should try to say something comforting before she picked up another picture -- one of Ludmila Kord, beaming as she posed with a group of her students after a performance. “Is this your mom? You have the same smile.”

“You think so? We had the same laugh too. It always surprised people, hearing that laugh come out of a pint-sized ballerina.” Everyone said that Ted took after his mother, from his curly, reddish hair to his expressive eyebrows to his compact figure. The only things he’d really gotten from his father were the dimple in his chin and a propensity for women who were too good for him. “That’s probably my favorite photo of her. Mom didn’t like having her picture taken, but she always made an exception for her dance classes.” 

The blaster was packed and ready to go, but Dinah lingered to examine the other pictures. Bemused, Ted indulged her curiosity, answering her questions and gamely telling the accompanying stories while he tried to figure out her angle. Black Canary always had somewhere to be, crimes to investigate, corrupt establishments to topple, asses to kick. . . . It wasn’t like her to stop for a chit-chat.

Ted waited until she’d relinquished the last photo (a candid of Jaime and his friend Paco using the Scarab’s blasters to roast hot dogs) before he said, “Okay, what’s up? Do you need a favor? You don’t usually let me talk this long.” 

“Maybe I just felt like letting you talk today.” But she looked caught out, and Ted suddenly got it. 

“I’m starting to feel like I’ll disappoint you all if I don’t actually die.” 

“Oh, shut up.”

He grinned. “There’s the Dinah I know and love.” 

“People are allowed to be concerned about you, you know,” she said tartly. Her eyes darted along the row of picture frames and then back to his face. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good,” he said.

“Nice try. How about this time you don’t lie to my face?”

Ted laughed, lounging against the bench. “Really, I’m feeling pretty good. I realize it doesn’t look like it, but I’ve been resting. Booster and Skeets are doing all the heavy lifting and errand-running. I’m sleeping a lot, and I get tired easily. I’m also thirsty all the time. No, I’m not feeling up to running any marathons, but all things considered, I’m doing better than I have any right to be doing. How’s that?”

“Better,” she agreed. “Babs says you’re going under the knife.” 

“I’ll have a definite date soon, but I’m ready to get it over with as soon as possible.” 

“That’s understandable. How did Booster take it?”

“Do you remember the time Guy tricked him into watching _Old Yeller_ by telling him it was a delightful comedy about a talking dog?” 

Dinah grimaced. 

“Yeah, it was like that.” Ted picked up a jeweler’s screwdriver at random from the heap of tools on his workbench to fiddle with it, spinning it between his fingers. “If something happens,” he began casually, deliberately avoiding her eyes, “you would look out for him, wouldn’t you?” 

There was a brief silence. “Ted, is there. . . . Is there something you’re not telling us about---”

“No, no! I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. The place I’m going to gives Mayo Clinic a run for its money. It’s fine, it’s a routine procedure.” He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated with himself and embarrassed without knowing quite why. “Ignore me, Dinah. My thoughts are all over the place lately. Maybe I’ve been sleeping too much.”

Dinah shifted next to him, her hands cocked on her hips. It was how she posed when she was feeling uncharacteristically out of her depth but had decided to barrel her way through it anyway. Ted felt a faint thrill of foreboding. “Look, I know it’s none of my business, but are you two ever going to talk about it?” 

“Talk about what? Stock options? The history of the Visigoths? Cher’s filmography?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” 

Ted took a deep breath. “You’re right, it is none of your business.” He latched the blaster case emphatically and then slid it across the bench toward her. “Tell Robin that I’ll email him the rest of the specs as soon as I finish a software update. Bye-bye, Birdy.” 

Dinah pursed her lips, but she took the blaster and departed with a distinctly sarcastic-looking wave. 

***

“Ted! Teeeeed!” 

Ted made a muffled noise of inquiry, necktie clenched between his teeth as he struggled to button his shirt one-handed and open his bedroom door at the same time. Poking his head out into the hall, he found Booster running up the stairs, looking mildly panicked. Skeets trailed sedately after him. 

“Ted, I just got a call from TJ. You remember TJ, from Cambry Talent? The lady with the nose piercing and the fake French accent? Well, she called to tell me that one of her models has the stomach flu, so she wants me to come fill in for a shoot in Toronto,” Booster explained, all in a breathless rush. “What do I do?” 

Ted won the battle with his shirt and pulled the tie out of his mouth to loop it under his collar. “What do you mean, what do you do? You smile at the camera, and they take your picture, and they post it at bus stops so teenagers can vandalize it.” 

Booster opened his mouth and then abruptly shut it. “Are you wearing that tie to work? In public?” 

“Yeah!” Ted adjusted the knot and pulled out the tail to look it over admiringly. He’d bought it yesterday as a ‘congrats on not dying this week’ gift to cheer himself up. It was a fun, yet elegant tie: lavender satin with an argyle pattern in cloth-of-gold. “You like it?” 

“You’re wearing it with a green sport coat and slate dress pants,” Booster said, sounding physically pained. He glanced down at Ted’s feet. “And saddle shoes.” 

“Yes?” Ted gave himself a second look, puzzled. It was a fancy tie, from a fancy shop, and there weren’t even any ketchup stains on it. “You don’t like it?” 

Skeets made a staticky noise that sounded almost like a throat being cleared. “Booster, sir, perhaps you should tell Ted more about the photoshoot.” 

“Right, good call. TJ says it’s for a big print ad campaign for Northstar Canadian Airlines. I guess they’re launching a new frequent flyer rewards program. The shoot is scheduled for four days, but they’ll pay by the hour, and I could really use the money.” 

“Sounds like a great opportunity,” Ted agreed. “I’m not seeing what the problem is.” 

“I mean, I’d have to be away all week. TJ said I might need to stay until Friday if the weather causes any delays. Skeets has never been to Canada either, so I was going to take him along, but that means that you’d be here alone. I could call Tora and see if maybe she could stay with you. . . .” 

“Booster, I don’t need a babysitter. I’m a thirty-five---” 

“Thirty-nine,” Skeets interjected. 

Ted gave him the stink eye. “I’m a thirty-nine-year-old man who can take care of himself, thank you very much.” 

Sighing, Booster rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and then shook his head dolefully. “No, I shouldn’t. Besides, I’ve still got some bruises from that fight with Toymaker, and I hate wearing full-body foundation. It always ends up getting in my pubes.” 

“Why would you need to take your clothes off for an airline ad?” 

The look that Booster gave him was drier than a vintage Chianti. 

“You’re right, that was a stupid question.” Ted patted his slacks until he found his wallet. “How much do you need? You’ll have to get a hotel.” 

"I’m good,” Booster said, waving him off. “If I did go, I have a lady-friend in Toronto I can crash with.” 

Ted tamped down on a frisson of displeasure. “I didn’t realize they allowed overnight guests in the nursing home.” 

A muscle in Booster’s cheek twitched. He looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or get mad. “Are you ever going to let that go?” 

“Am I ever going to let go of the fact that your sugar mama married and then divorced you within the span of three months and left you with absolutely nothing for a settlement because it didn’t occur to you to read the prenup you signed? No, I’m not. Have you actually met me?” 

“I guess I’m just an optimist.” 

Ted ruffled his hair fondly and then grabbed his shoulders to turn him around, steering them both toward the stairs. “Well, Mr. Optimist, call Faux Frenchie back and tell her you’re in. I promise I’ll refrain from falling into a pit of quicksand or running in front of a bus while you’re gone.” 

“Are you sure?” 

" _Y_ _es_ , Booster. Go look pretty for the Canadians.” 

Ted made breakfast and ate standing at the counter while he read through some meeting minutes. Booster flitted in and out, nattering excitedly at Skeets while he packed a mountain of clothes from his seemingly bottomless closet. Ted just listened quietly, hiding a smile in his coffee cup. The older Booster got, the less frequent the modeling gigs became, and it was obvious that Booster missed them; being a hero was always his priority, but the occasional shoot was a source of easy money and attention, two things that Booster loved. 

“Hey, can you get my blender out of the cupboard?” Booster asked, attempting to wedge an entire hair dryer into the front pocket of his carry-on. “I need to take that too.” 

“What’s your blender doing in my cupboard?” Ted opened the overhead cabinet and found not only the blender, but a variety of other unfamiliar kitchen accoutrements that certainly didn’t belong to him. It occurred to him that Booster’s favorite mug was sitting next to Ted’s coffeemaker, and Booster’s laptop was on his couch, and several pairs of Booster’s shoes were in his hall closet, and Booster’s skin care products were lined up in a neat row along his bathroom sink, and if Ted had any sense of self-preservation at all, he might have acknowledged some concern at the fact that Booster was clearly in the middle of co-opting a share of Ted’s house. They'd tried the roommate thing before, and it tended to end badly. 

Still, Ted decided, he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it if Booster wasn’t. The house really was too big for one person, and when Ted went for a long stretch without any guests, living there felt a bit like being a single plankton bobbing in the Atlantic. It was nice to have someone nearby, even if that someone had an obnoxious habit of clogging the sink with his imported mud masks. 

***

A torrential downpour unleashed itself on the Windy City. By the third day of continuous rain that came down almost sideways and thwarted even the hardiest umbrella, Ted gave up on keeping himself presentable. Besides, it was easy enough to slip into the restroom after coming back from lunch and stick his head under the hand dryers. 

He was still patting his hair down as he returned to the executive suite. Mel’s door was closed. At the reception desk, Angie was reorganizing her extensive stash of Sticky Notes, a mug of steaming tea clutched in one hand. She’d thrown on a cardigan, one that Ted had never seen her wear before. It was extremely pink. 

“So, did I make it back in time?” he asked. 

Angie glanced at her computer screen, earrings jingling with the movement. “Five minutes to spare, boss.”

“Good. I was sure I was going to be late. You wouldn’t believe the line at the Salad Shack today. Whoever does inventory must have messed up, because they ran out of lettuce. I thought there was going to be a riot. I barely escaped with my life. Did Mel sneak anything onto my agenda while I was gone?”

“Not today. All that’s left is the conference call with Mr. Jun at one.”

“Any calls from St. Marcy’s?” 

She shook her head, pushing her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Sorry, Mr. Kord, still nothing. Do you want me to call them?”

“No, no, they said they’d contact me. It's just weird,” Ted complained. “It’s been a week now, and they sounded like they wanted to get the pre-op consultation set up as soon as they could. If they call while I’m in the meeting, go ahead and interrupt us, okay? Jun’s an easygoing guy. He won’t mind.” 

Halfway into the video-conference, Ted’s cell phone buzzed; when he glanced over at it, a jolt of anxiety hit him at the number on the screen. “Jae-hyun, I’m terribly sorry, but I have an emergency call that I need to take. Can I call you back in thirty?”

“Of course, Ted. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

He swiped the answer button before he’d even closed the camera feed completely. “Jaime? Are you okay?”

“Hi, Ted,” Jaime said, and thank God, he sounded fine, and not like someone who was bleeding to death. “I’m really sorry. I know you’re at work, but I didn’t know who else to ask, and my parents are going to be mad if I miss dinner again.”

“Hey, it’s alright. What happened?”

“So, Paco and Brenda had this idea to set up a local website where people could, like, submit tips or requests if they needed Blue Beetle’s help.” 

“They're enterprising young people.”

“They didn’t ask me first,” Jaime said, with a touch of exasperation. “We got this email from an old lady in Juárez who said that a chupacabra has been killing her chickens and chased her granddaughter.” 

Ted guffawed. “I think you’re going to need to hire someone to filter through those emails before they get to you if you’re serious about this. Actually, I could whip up a program for you. A few tweaks here and there---”

“Ted, please,” Jaime interrupted. “What I’m trying to say is that Khaji-Da found a trail to follow that led out into the lady’s barn, and I sort of. . . . caught it?”

“You caught a chupacabra.” 

“Yeah.”

Ted took a moment to process that. “Okay.” 

“I mean, it doesn’t look like any animal me and Khaji-Da have ever seen, and its eyes are glowing. I can send you a picture,” Jaime offered. “What should I do with it? I can’t bring it home -- Mom would kill me -- but I shouldn’t let it go either if it’s been eating people’s chickens and chasing kids. Is there a procedure for this? Like, a superhero version of Animal Control?”

“Do you still have that comm that Oracle sent you? Use that and call up the Watchtower. Ask for J’onn J’onzz, and tell him that you’ve got a creature that’s either alien or an undocumented species. He’ll do his telepathic whammy on it, and if it’s just an animal, zoologists around the world can get into fistfights over who gets to study it first. If it’s sentient and self-aware, the League will need to keep it the hell away from S.T.A.R. Labs. Oh, and tell J’onn I’ll mail him a box of Chocos if he helps you out.” 

“Okay, thanks,” Jaime said, sounding relieved. “You’re the best.”

“You’re welcome, Beetle Lad. Don’t forget to send me that picture! I want to sell it to the National Enquirer.”

Ted called Jun back to finish hashing out production cost details before deciding that he very much needed a brisk walk and a nerve-bracing cup of coffee. He strode past the reception desk toward the elevator and then stopped, backtracking to lean over the counter. “How do you feel about cryptids?”

Angie blinked up at him. “Cryptids, as in things like the Loch Ness Monster?”

“Well, I think that one’s undeniably a Scotsman pulling a prank. I’m talking about Bigfoot or yetis or ocean megafauna, or, say, chupacabras, for example.” 

“I can’t say that I’ve ever considered my feelings on the subject, Mr. Kord.” 

The elevator chimed. When the door opened, a familiar-looking young woman in full lab gear stumbled into the lobby, panting. Her cheeks were bright red under the face shield, and Ted finally placed her as one of Murray’s new technicians. Tabitha? Tamika? T-something. He vaguely remembered having had a conversation with her about the physics of lightsabers.

“Dr. Kord,” she exclaimed. “Thank God. Dr. Takamoto wants you in the green containment lab!”

“And he sent you on a marathon instead of using the intercom?”

The tech windmilled her arms, still puffing. “He’s testing solar generator model 2C, and he said you need to come down right now!”

“It isn’t working?”

“It blew out all the electronics on the third floor.”

“Oh, crap, it’s working. Angie, I’ll be back in a few hours!”

***

As Ted wished Mel goodnight and left the office, he was still thinking about Jaime’s call. Jaime was somewhat isolated in El Paso – Ted knew he’d started palling around with Young Justice, but there were no nearby League headquarters, and Oracle’s comm was only useful if Jaime carried it with him constantly. Jaime could fly anywhere he wanted to at ludicrous speeds, sure, but if the Scarab were damaged somehow, he would need an alternate method of calling for back-up. 

By midnight, Ted’s whole kitchen table was covered with scrap, wires, assorted tools, and empty coffee cups. Amidst the detritus were two shiny new wristband communicators: solar-powered, waterproof, capable of broadcasting a broad-frequency distress signal to anywhere on Earth, and pre-programmed with space-grade contact links to the Watchtower, the Bug, Oracle’s Clocktower, and the Hall of Justice. One was for Jaime to wear, and the other was for the Reyes family to keep at home. Ted uploaded the specs to Kord Omniversal’s data cloud in the event that the devices would ever need to be replicated. 

The comm got to him to thinking about the Bug. He was the only one who really knew her ins and outs, and he wasn’t going to be around forever. Why condemn the Bug to a scrap-heap when she would still be perfectly usable for someone who had the relevant information? The thought of the old girl being thrown away, or dismantled for parts, made him feel a little frantic -- if no one could understand what she had to offer, Ted’s life work would be forgotten, finite, obsolete. No one would know how to upgrade her, how to properly maintain her delicate systems. No one would know how to take the tech that he developed especially for her and implement it elsewhere, expanding on what he’d started for the betterment of society. No, he couldn’t possibly let all those years of sweat and blood count for nothing. Something had to be done, and giving his greatest invention a proper operating manual was the most logical starting point. He went into his study and began typing up a piloting guide, and then he decided that he might as well toss in some tips for maintenance and repair while he was at it. 

Time sort of went screwy after that. 

Every so often he’d stagger over to the sofa for a brief lie-down or to the kitchen to grab something quick to eat or to the bathroom to shower. He was dimly aware of having shrugged on a suit to go to the office on at least a few occasions, but he was floating in a state of hyperfocus that tended to filter out inconsequential distractions like adult responsibilities. He wrote, and he subsisted on protein bars and black coffee, and he paced around his big, too-empty house and wrote some more. 

This had to get done. He _needed_ to get this done. 

By the time he came up for air, he was one-hundred and ninety pages in, schematics carpeting the desk and the floor of his study, and his eyes were burning. He spent a solid five minutes staring blankly at his laptop screen before he realized that someone was watching him. 

“Teddy? You okay?”

Ted swiveled his desk chair around, rubbing the grit out of his eyes. Slowly, Booster came into focus, standing in the doorway with his overnight bag still on his shoulder. It seemed that he’d just gotten done with the photoshoot; he was clearly wearing some sort of bronzer, and his hair was so heavily shellacked with product that it looked plastic. “Hey, Boost. I thought you weren’t due back until Friday. How was Canada?”

“Today is Sunday,” Booster said flatly, his eyebrows pinched together. “Did you sleep at all this week?”

“Of course I . . . . “ Ted trailed off, having become dimly aware that he couldn’t definitively answer that one way or another. “Um. Can I plead the fifth?”

Booster inhaled heavily through his nose. 

“I'm working on a user’s guide for the Bug,” Ted offered. Eager to avoid his friend’s disapproving stare, he turned back to his computer and tabbed through the document. With some alarm, he noticed that he’d apparently switched to Russian at one point. 

Maybe he’d overdone it a little. 

“Why would you need a manual? You never let anyone fly it without you there.”

“Well, you know,” Ted said vaguely. “If someone else needs to be able to take her out without me, I’d rather that they didn’t drive her into a skyscraper on the first go-round.” 

Booster’s frown deepened. “Well, I’m back, and I’m hungry,” he said pointedly, draping himself over the back of the chair and poking Ted’s cheek. “I’ll make dinner, and then we can watch the game. Dallas Cowboys versus the Coast City Mariners tonight. It should be a good one. You look like you need some actual food. And about ten years of sleep.”

“That sounds nice, Boost, but I really need to finish this. I’m almost done.” 

“Can’t you work on it later?”

“I don’t have _time_ ,” Ted said, sharper than he meant to. 

Booster drew back, looking at him like Ted had reached over and socked him in the gut. 

Ted bit his lip. “I didn’t-- I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“Sure.” 

“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t--I should be pacing myself, not overextending. Give me half an hour to get to a good stopping point? You can catch me up on the first quarter.” 

“Sure,” Booster said again, but this time he was smiling, and Ted knew that all was forgiven. “I’ll make a veggie pizza with that cauliflower crust. Thirty minutes, okay?”

“Got it.” 

When Ted woke up, groggy and aching, it took him a minute to realize that he’d fallen asleep. He was still at his desk, his cheek mashed into the keyboard, and the lights were dim. Disoriented, he fought to comprehend what had woken him -- Booster was pulling him out of his chair, and a moment later they were moving; Ted instinctively put his arms around Booster’s shoulders. 

“M’wake,” he slurred, struggling a little to get down. “Boos’r?”

“I’m not letting you walk on your own when you can’t keep both of your eyes open at the same time.” 

Ted couldn’t argue with that. He was half-asleep again already, past the point of exhaustion where his motor control was shot, so he gave up and let Booster carry him upstairs. “The game.” He registered a sleepy pang of remorse. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Booster said, bumping Ted’s bedroom door open with his hip. 

“How was the shoot?” Ted mumbled, letting Booster peel back the covers and pour him onto the bed. It was dark and quiet in his room, and some tight fist of tension inside Ted finally unfurled; he sank into the mattress with a grateful moan. Aching muscles relaxed, his whole body crying out with relief, and he felt twice as stupid. He wasn’t twenty anymore. He couldn’t brush off a week-long bender like it was nothing, and he’d been medically advised to get lots of sleep, drink lots of water, and eat the proper amount of nutritious food. He’d done exactly none of that for almost a week straight. 

If his doctors ever found out about this stunt, they’d prescribe him a royal ass-kicking. 

Booster helped him with his shirt when his shaky fingers proved unequal to the herculean task of unbuttoning it. “It was fine,” he said, as Ted managed to kick off his loafers. “Actually, it was kind of boring.”

“Really? You were surrounded by gorgeous models for a week, and you were bored?”

Booster shrugged, balling up Ted’s shirt and jeans before tossing them in the hamper. “I dunno.”

“Maybe you’re getting old,” Ted teased. He expected Booster to launch into a vociferous protest, the way he usually did when someone reminded him that he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken these days, but Booster shrugged again. 

“Maybe I am,” he said. “Get some sleep, or I’ll have Skeets weld your door shut.” 

“G’night, buddy.”

“Night, Beetle.” Stepping out into the hall, Booster closed the door part-way, leaving a slice of dim light spilling in from the hall. 

Unable to resist a parting shot, Ted drowsily called after him, “Have fun watching your loser Mariners get creamed.”

Booster’s hand poked back through the door to flip him the bird, and Ted chuckled himself to sleep. 

***

“Sweet Jesus,” Murray breathed, surveying the noisy, hormonal crowd spilling into the front lobby below. “Forty-two sixth graders. It’s like a vision of hell.” 

Ted sipped his coffee -- extra strong for today -- and watched a kid rub his grubby face all over the handprint scanners at the security desk before being pulled away by an irritable chaperone. “For five hours, they’re all yours, Roomie.”

Murray turned his head to glare balefully at him. “Is it too late to hand in my resignation?”

“Yup. You can blame this all on Mel. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Don’t try to pin this on me,” Mel complained, joining them at the balcony railing. “You signed off on it, big-shot. It’s good PR and community outreach.” 

“We already have an outreach program. Where do you think all the interns come from? They don’t spring fully-formed from the earth like Athena from the head of Zeus.” 

“Whine all you want once this is over, Takamoto,” Mel said. “Right now, get your butt downstairs so I can introduce you, and paste on your best smile for the kids. Got it? And Ted, for God’s sake, _please_ be appropriate.”

Mel, unlike Ted, was a consummate professional who was uncowed by giving impromptu speeches and facing down feral mobs of children. She perched herself halfway down the main staircase, Ted and Murray lurking behind her, and waved until she got everyone’s attention. 

“Good morning, everyone! My name is Melody Case, and I’m Vice-President of Operations. I’d like to welcome you to Kord Omniversal Research and Development! This is Dr. Ted Kord, President and founder, and this is Dr. Murray Takamoto, Director of R&D, who is _delighted_ to be your guide today. You were all specially chosen to join us here because you’ve demonstrated an interest and aptitude in the sciences, and science is what Kord Omniversal is all about. 

“We’ll be doing a tour first, so you can get a feel for how all of the different departments work together, and then you’ll get to put on some lab coats and do some experiments of your own with the lab staff! We’ll take a lunch break at 12 and then have more fun in the afternoon. Please remember to stay with your group and listen to the directions that any staff members give you. This is an active worksite, and we want everyone to be safe. I’m sure Mr. Kord would like to say a few words to you before you go.” Mel flashed her most winning smile and then shot Ted a look of warning expectation. 

“Hey, guys,” Ted said. “I won’t bore you with any grandstanding, because I’m sure you’d rather be doing experiments with Dr. Takamoto instead of listening to me talk. I’ll just say that we’re honored to have you here to enjoy your tour and learn a little bit about how research can be applied in the real world. You’re not just honors students -- you’re bright, squishy young brains that can be molded for the advancement of scientific progress!” 

“Gross,” someone muttered. 

Ted subtly gave Murray a shove forward and then clapped his hands. “All right, let’s get to it. Have fun, kids!”

His presidential duty discharged, Ted scurried back to his office, abandoning Murray to be consumed by the horde. He spent his morning catching up on emails and fiddling with a medical waste disposal automaton that the Robotics unit had sent up for his feedback. He’d just finished dictating a brief summary of the areas for improvement when Mel knocked lightly on his door. 

“I’m going down to check with Takamoto,” she said. “I haven’t heard any explosions, but I want to see how things are going. You coming?”

Ted got up, groaning as his knee audibly popped. “Lead on, El Capitan.”

On the way to the staff elevator, they were cut off by the students, who were being taken to lunch in the employee cafeteria. They stopped to watch the middle schoolers stampede past, and Ted had to admit that, decked out in their oversized PPE and lab coats, they were awfully cute. 

When taken on an individual basis, he would even say that he liked children. They were unrestrained beings of pure instinct and impulse, with an unparalleled ability to process and integrate new information. In fact, they were so receptive to intellectual and emotional stimuli that Ted had decided long ago that he should never, ever be responsible for one -- at least, certainly not a biological child. Within the League’s own ranks, there appeared to be a higher than average chance of one’s progeny becoming evil, and given Ted’s IQ and the Kord family’s history of supervillainy. . . . well, with odds like that, Ted had opted for a vasectomy. 

One of the kids was lingering apart from the herd, watching them with big doe eyes. He looked like he could have been Ryan Choi’s long-lost kid brother, right down to the terrible haircut and shy smile. 

Ted returned his smile. “Hey. Are you enjoying the tour?” 

The boy startled, like he hadn’t expected to be called out on staring, but then he nodded, too-big goggles slipping down his nose before he caught them.

“Did Dr. Takamoto show you the electron microscopes?” Ted asked.

The kid practically lit up. “Oh, man, it was so freaking cool! We got to look at feathers and onion skin cells and this crazy bacteria that was wiggling around, and I got to put in the slides, and---” One of his classmates snickered, and his eager expression faltered. “I mean, it was neat, uh. . . . “ His eyes zeroed in Ted’s name-badge, and he flushed. “Oh! Sorry, Mr. Kord. Dr. Kord?” He cast a helpless glance at his group, looking like he wanted to melt through the floor. “Um, President Kord?”

“Try ‘Ted’. And for the record, I think electron microscopes are pretty freaking cool too.” 

The kid returned his smile hesitantly before he was shuffled off by the chaperones. 

Mel was chuckling under her breath as they made their way down the elevator to the R&D personnel offices. The central lab was fairly empty, since most of the techs were on lunch. Murray’s ID location had him down here, though, so they could hopefully catch him before the students were done with their break. 

“What gives?” Ted asked, because Mel was still chortling and he was nosy. 

“That was a blast to the past.”

“What was?”

“That boy,” she said, grinning. “It was like looking at prepubescent you.” 

Ted swiped his badge at the security checkpoint and let Mel pass him when it slid open. “Incorrect. I was a lot chubbier. Besides, you met me after I’d already gone through puberty.”

“Oh, believe me, that was obvious.”

“Are you slut-shaming me?”

“I don’t want to know the context,” Murray said glumly. He was sitting in the tiny reception lobby with his head in his hands, a bag of pretzels and an untouched peanut butter sandwich propped on his lap. 

“Are you okay?” Mel asked. “You look frazzled.”

Murray shifted his fingers enough to glare at her. “I just spent three solid hours trying to stop forty preteens from ruining my life’s work. They won’t stop touching everything. Zero impulse control, no concept of lab safety, and an aversion for washing their hands. They’re an invasive species of little germ factories, and they’re _in my lab_.”

“Come on, they’re not that bad,” Ted laughed.

“One of them licked a test tube. It’s like living with you again.”

“I’m choosing to ignore that.” Ted sneaked one of Murray’s unguarded pretzels and popped it in his mouth. “Besides, you work around bacteria all the time and it never gives you the willies.”

“The bacteria are contained in carefully-controlled environments. It’s not remotely equitable. You can’t put a child in a petri dish.”

“Not unless you want the police involved,” Ted agreed. Behind him, he heard the lab doors slide open. He glanced around to see who had joined them, but there was no one there. Goosebumps rippled along his arms.

At exactly the instant that the security alarm bleated ‘UNAUTHORIZED VISITOR’ loudly enough to make him jump, a voice from behind him rasped, “Theodore Stephen Kord.”

“Gah!” Ted shrieked.

Murray’s sandwich made a sad plopping sound as it hit the floor.

“Ted,” Mel said levelly, after a brief, tense silence. She had her dukes up, but she looked thoroughly spooked, eyeing the tall, silent figure in a trenchcoat and fedora. “Ted, that man doesn’t have a face.” 

Ted sucked in a breath, willing his heartbeat to slow. “It’s fine.”

“He doesn’t have a _face_.” 

“It’s fine. We’ve worked together,” Ted said emphatically, and a measure of the fear leached out of his friends’ eyes, although Mel didn’t lower her fists. “Can you give us a minute?” 

“The lab---” Murray began nervously.

“No fights. No destroying delicate equipment, I promise. Just give me a minute to talk with my friend here.” 

“We’ll wait here for you,” Mel said slowly, and Ted could hear the unspoken ‘ _with several burly members of the security team._ ’ 

“I’ll be in out in ten.” Ted opened the nearest available door, which happened to be a janitor’s closet, and muscled his uninvited guest inside, shutting the door firmly behind them. “What the hell, Vic?”

“I assume that’s meant to be a rhetorical question,” the Question said. 

“Cute. Not that it’s not lovely to see you, but is there any particular reason you decided to break into my R&D director’s lab and give me a fourth heart attack? How did you bypass my security?”

“Irrelevant.” The Question produced a thin file folder from the depths of his coat. It had coffee rings on it and mustard splattered across one corner, but Ted took it anyway and opened it up. 

“Is this----?” 

“A friend of yours.”

“Farley Fleeter,” Ted murmured. He flipped through the pages, bewildered. It was a neatly-typed summary of Fleeter’s petty convictions, as well as the crimes in which he was suspected to have been an accomplice, and a list of his known associates, aliases, and places of employment. On the last page was a current address in Hub City. “Why?”

“The South End Warehouse Fire. 1993. Police had no proof. No witnesses willing to talk. No conviction ever stuck. But Fleeter went underground afterwards. The Madmen disbanded.” 

That didn’t explain _why_. Ted had long ago given up on being able to prove what Fleeter and his men had done, but the unresolved case, and the loss of four innocent lives, had never stopped bothering him. “Did you do this? How did you find him? His cover was so deep that I figured he’d either gotten himself offed or went straight.”

It was impossible to read expressions under that blank mask, but there was something slightly exasperated in the set of the Question’s shoulders. “You’re not asking the right questions. I discovered a plot.”

 _Here we go_ , Ted thought. From experience, he knew that if he went down this rabbithole, he’d spend the next hour listening to an explanation about how exactly Donny and Marie Osmond concealed their criminal undertakings via the guise of wholesome family entertainment, using their recording studio as a front for stem-cell research in the hopes of seizing control of Nova Scotia with twin clones of Hitler. “We have about ten more minutes before my Chief of Security kicks down the door and demands to know how you got inside this building. Manny’s a nice guy, but he gets pissy when his lunch is interrupted, and I don’t think you’ll like the questions he’s going to ask. Can we get to the point?”

“Is such a thing possible?” The Question thrust his gloved hands into his coat pockets and lounged back against the wall. “Rumors are dangerous whispers in the wind. A heart condition, an operation. A vulnerable moment. An unguarded hospital room.” 

A shiver skittered up Ted’s spine. “What?”

“You,” the Question said. “I heard the whispers in the wind. An associate and I tracked Fleeter. He believes himself to be a family man, and out of the business, but the criminal mind is predictable. He hates the Blue Beetle still. Blames you for the fire and his own guilt.” 

Ted stared at the other man, too surprised to muster up any emotion but disbelief. “Are you saying he’s going to kill me?”

“Doubtful. He’s become comfortable in his domestic life. Unlikely that he would do anything to jeopardize it, even for a chance at revenge. But he’s been talking. It’s more bluster than any concrete plan -- the ramblings of an old man who talks too freely. You would still be wise to take precautions. Corruptible men are always corruptible.”

A dreadful thought occurred to Ted. “Wait. _Wait_. If Fleeter knows I’m getting heart surgery, that means he knows who I am.” 

Before Ted could work himself into a proper panic attack, the Question held up a quelling hand. “He’s heard only that the former hero known as the Blue Beetle is having an operation. Keep the details of your medical leave as Ted Kord concealed from your employees. Some may be moles.” 

In the brief period that Ted had worked in Hub City, Blue Beetle and the Question had crossed paths a fair amount, occasionally assisting each other with hard cases. In those days, the Question had been a stoic, effective fighter, sharp-witted, with an uncompromising code of ethics. But time hadn’t been kind. With each sporadic meeting since then, the Question seemed. . . well, more unhinged, one degree further unmoored from reality. 

Beyond that, Ted couldn’t see any reason why the Question’s delusions would cook up a plot involving him or Farley Fleeter, or any reason to suspect he was underplaying the danger. Besides, he’d told Ted his first name, a small but meaningful gift from a very secretive man. In the spirit of that long-ago gesture of trust, Ted offered his hand for a shake. 

“Thank you, Vic.”

“I’ll keep my ear to the wind. Watch yourself, Beetle.” 

Ted lingered, waiting for the Question to disappear in a puff of smoke, or whatever it was he used to make a dramatic getaway, but it soon became apparent that that wasn’t happening. And if Ted knew his Chief of Security, Manny would be bursting in with backup in a matter of minutes. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later?”

The Question stood there. 

“You don’t have an exit plan, do you?” 

“We’re in a closet,” the Question pointed out. “How was I supposed to plan for that?”

***

When Ted arrived home later that afternoon, sore from having smuggled the Question through a maintenance shaft, it was with no greater desire than to shovel some food in his face and collapse on the couch. Upon opening the door, he found Booster sitting on said couch and wincing as Skeets examined a bloody gash on his left shoulder blade. Ted’s first aid kid was open on the coffee table. 

Ted dropped his briefcase, hurrying over to take a peek at the damage. “What happened?”

“Some jerk with a miniaturized cannon got me in the single second that I didn’t have my shield up,” Booster grunted. He pointed at his bangs, which were pitiably charred. “He went after my hair, the bastard. Can you believe that? It’s going to take so much conditioning to repair!”

“It’s hardly noticeable,” Ted lied. “Like a photon cannon?”

“No, like an actual cannon, just tiny.” 

“Huh. I think this might need a butterfly bandage.” The cut on Booster’s back was shallower than it first appeared, so stitches weren’t necessary. Good thing too, because Booster was hilariously squeamish about stitches. They apparently weren’t a thing in the 25th century. “Painkillers?”

“Already took some.”

“I’m glad you did. There’s some dirt in there that I’ll have to clean out, and then we’d better do a peroxide wash. Never fear, Dr. Kord and Nurse Skeets will patch you up.” Ted fished a pair of sterile gloves from the kit and put them on with a snap. “Bend over and cough, Mr. Carter.”

Booster rolled his eyes. 

Skeets had helpfully located the butterfly bandages, along with a tube of antibacterial gel and a gauze pad. Booster yelped as Ted gently pulled the broken skin apart, using forceps to remove what turned out to be gravel. It came out without much of a struggle, but Booster was so tense that his back was like a slab of marble. “You okay?”

“Distract me,” Booster hissed through clenched teeth.

“Sure. Guess who wants to kill me?”

“How many guesses do I get?”

Ted handed the forceps to Skeets in exchange for a q-tip and opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “One.” 

“Today was the school tour, right? I’ll put my money on Takamoto.” 

“Nope. Farley Fleeter.”

“Sounds like a country music singer. Is he one of your employees?”

“He’s an ex-con who would apparently like nothing better than to sneak into my hospital room while I’m anesthetized and make sure I never wake up,” said Ted. “He’ll probably have to get in line, though.” 

Booster’s shoulders shot up toward his ears. “What?”

“Hey! Hold still, or I’ll have to redo the bandage.”

But Booster pulled himself out of Ted’s grip impatiently, turning around to face him. “Seriously, what?”

Ted got up to sit on Booster’s other side and deftly pinched the edges of the wound together. “Move again before I get this bandaid on you, and I’ll put you in a headlock. The Question made an unauthorized visit to work today to warn me.”

“The faceless chick from Gotham?”

“No, the other one, from Hub City. The original flavor.” 

“Isn’t that guy a total headcase?”

“And Batman isn’t? He came to tell me that Fleeter’s been running off his mouth about wanting his revenge, blah blah. You’d think Hub City's criminal underground would have something juicier to gossip about.” Ted finished taping down the gauze pad and gave Booster’s uninjured shoulder a pat. “All done. Sorry I don’t have a lollipop for you, kiddo.” 

“Are you alright, sir?” Skeets inquired. 

“No,” Booster said. “Is this guy a threat?”

Ted stripped off his gloves and starting repacking the first aid kit. “Not really. I mean, he’s done some terrible things, mostly by accident, but he doesn’t strike me as the premeditated murder type. Haven’t I ever told you about the Madmen?”

Booster shook his head.

“Mmm. I think I was twenty-two the first time I ran into Fleeter and his gang. They made their living as distractions for hire -- they’d contract out with other criminals to cause chaos and keep law enforcement occupied while their employers did whatever crime they’d intended to do. I’ve got to say, I didn’t really take them all that seriously at first. They didn’t hurt anyone; they just wore stupid costumes and racked up a lot of property damage.” 

“What happened?” 

Ted fidgeted, turning the kit over in his hands. “A local gang hired them to distract raiding cops so they could empty a warehouse they were using to store cocaine. Nobody really knows how it went down, but the Madmen lit a fire at an auxiliary building as a distraction. There was a leaky gas line.” He chewed on his lip, remembering the terror of blinding light and heat, the shockwave that had left his ears ringing for hours afterwards. “The explosion took out half the block. I was damn lucky my suit was fireproof and built for concussive force. Four people died, including one of Fleeter’s men, and over thirty more were injured, broken bones and shrapnel and horrible burns. It was ugly. Really ugly.” 

Booster made a sympathetic noise. 

“Most unfortunate, sir,” said Skeets. 

“Bit of an understatement, pal. It’s amazing the death toll wasn’t higher,” Ted said. “As much manpower as the Chicago PD put into it, there was nothing but circumstantial evidence. The Madmen disappeared. It must have spooked them, because as far as I’m aware, they’d never caused someone’s death before. Fleeter was gone, untraceable. He settled in Hub City and had a family, apparently. I never forgot him, or the fire. I guess he couldn’t forget either, if he’s still stewing over it.”

“You’re not making him sound like he isn’t a threat, Ted.”

Ted waved him off. “The Question is convinced that Fleeter doesn’t know who I am, just that the old Beetle has a bad heart. It’s not like he can call up St. Marcy’s and ask which room Blue Beetle’s staying in. Besides, I’ll have Booster Gold there to make sure no one puts a pillow over my face, right?”

“Right,” Booster said, but he looked sort of strange. Maybe he’d lost more blood than Ted had thought. With that in mind, he ordered his friend to lay down and went into the kitchen to fix something for them to eat. 

The fridge was packed with the ingredients for those vomit-inducing green smoothies Booster liked; he pulled out egg whites and a packet of tofu bacon instead. Out in the living room, he could hear Booster arguing with Skeets about whether it was medically advisable to lay on his side instead of his stomach to watch TV. 

Ted listened to them bicker, laying strips of bacon in the sizzling pan and trying very hard not to think about the smell of ashy smoke and burning skin. 

* * *

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the plot thickens! 
> 
> Booster's marriage to Gladys was retconned as having been a prank, but I choose to believe that it actually happened because becoming a trophy husband is Peak Booster Behavior. Also, Guy is exactly the kind of person who would trick people into watching Old Yeller. I watched it years ago and I still bear the emotional scars. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always!


	4. Four

* * *

_FOUR_

* * *

Something was beeping. 

Ted groaned, flinging an arm across his face, and silently willed the noise to stop. Of course it didn’t. Reluctantly, he levered himself to his feet and limped from the cot over to the desk that housed his workshop’s core computer bank. 

Collapsing heavily into the chair, he logged onto the server and opened the chat application, which was blinking with a notification from an active user. His annoyance melted away as soon as he saw who it was. 

**_RollingThunder:_ ** _Hi, Beeb! I sent a revised copy of your updates to the secure cloud._

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _That was quick. Thanks! : >) _

Since the Bug was out of commission for the foreseeable future, Ted had dusted off one of his other aircrafts in the event that he needed fast transport. The one he’d chosen was an older model, something he’d finished when he was still the Blue Beetle. A tiny, two-occupant hovercraft designed for speed and stealth, she was a heavily-streamlined Bug; she had no weapons array or extendable arms, and her topside was covered by the solar tiles that fueled her. Ted had only taken her out a few times, preferring the versatility of the Bug, but he was pleased to discover that she was still in usable condition after being kept in storage for so long. The only thing that required polish was her obsolete computer system. 

Barbara’s coding was twenty times better than his own, so he’d sent his patch update to her to see if she could find any flaws. 

**_RollingThunder:_ ** _I made some tweaks and adjustments, but you should be good to go. Do I get to see the flying insect in question?_

Ted tabbed through his photo folders for a flattering shot and sent it. A few seconds later, the screen lit up with a new message. 

**_RollingThunder:_ ** _I love the design of those solar panels! They look just like wings. She’s beautiful. Does she have a name?_

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _Bug 2: Electric Bugaloo._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _I don’t know how to respond to that._

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _Kidding! : >) I called her Larva in the schematic work-ups, but I don’t suppose that’s a very marketable name. _

**_RollingThunder:_ ** _Not particularly. You’ll come up with something._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _How are your legs?_

Ted tilted back in his desk chair with a grunt. He didn’t know how she’d found out, but by this point, he knew better than to ask. 

Two nights ago he’d woken up, sweating and in pain, to discover that his ankles had ballooned up to twice their normal size. Somehow he’d managed to talk himself down from hyperventilating before hollering for Booster, and then Booster had freaked out, and they’d ended up at the nearest emergency room at an ungodly hour. 

Ted, because he was something of an intellectual masochist, had scoured the internet for medical literature on his condition the instant that he’d gotten a diagnosis; he was unsettlingly familiar with the fact that edema could be a calling card for heart failure. That aside, his feet swelling up like a pregnant woman’s didn’t bode well for his circulation either. The speed with which he’d been admitted by the nurses on duty had done nothing to allay his fears. It was enough to have him feeling wide awake, even at two in the morning. He’d sat stiffly on the bed, almost afraid to move, and watched Booster pace in tight circles while they waited for the doctor. 

Ted had been sent home as the sun was rising, armed with a prescription for some diuretics and strict orders to buy compression socks and elevate his feet whenever possible. Booster had dropped him off and gone to the pharmacy, and Ted laid on the couch and contemplated the harsh reality of spending the next month wearing Spanx on his legs and peeing every ten minutes. 

**_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _They’re okay._

And they were, sort of. The diuretics had done their job in reducing the amassment of fluid, but his ankles were bizarrely misshapen, and it hurt to stand for extended periods. He’d spent most of the weekend drifting from bed to couch to cot, when he wasn’t running off to the bathroom or napping.

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _Are you actually wearing the compression stockings?_

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _Yes, Ma._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _ >:( _

**_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _How did you make a frowny face using a speech-to-text program??_

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _I have my secrets._

 **_Bumblebeeb_ ** _: I hate wearing them. They make me feel like an escapee from the old folks’ home._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _But do they help?_

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _Yes._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _Then suck it up. I can understand if you find it embarrassing, but you have to push past that. There’s no shame in having a visible medical condition, and if someone gives you crap for it, they’re not worth knowing._

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _You’re right. I just feel like my body’s falling apart._

Ted deleted his reply and started over.

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _You’re right, as always._

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _I do get it. I really do._

The conversation was taking a melancholy turn that had he didn’t much care for. Hiking one foot gingerly onto the desk, he rolled up his trouser leg and snapped a picture to upload for Barbara. 

**_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _Ice made these especially for me. Jealous?_

Having heard Ted bitch about the socks, Tora had sent a gift for him via Booster: leg warmers, crocheted in Beetle blue, loose enough to fit over the compression stockings and thin enough to keep things cool. They were brightly-colored and cheerful and exactly the sort of thing Ted preferred to wear.

 **_RollingThunder:_ ** _:D I didn’t know Ice was artsy._

 **_Bumblebeeb:_ ** _She’s an elemental goddess of many talents._

They chatted for a while longer before Barbara was inevitably called upon to provide her services as Oracle. Ted told her to say hi to Dinah for him and then signed off. He slouched in his chair, idly debating what to do next. He could look over Barbara’s notes for the upgrade and start the process of implementing it into Larva’s computer. He could go upstairs and see if Booster had returned from patrol with the Justice Corps. He could log remotely onto his company’s server and start preparing for the week’s meetings and projects. 

Or he could flop down on the cot and sleep, like he’d been doing all morning. 

The prospect of wading through lines of code or forcing himself to review Powerpoint presentations on competitive quarterly growth had him yawning and rubbing at his eyes. Even the thought of walking across the workshop to the elevator seemed like more than he could handle. With a resigned sigh, Ted got out of his chair and shuffled back to the cot. 

Sleep it was. 

***

Balancing his coat and bag in one arm and a bakery box in the other, Ted bumped the door of the staff room open with his hip. Angie was preparing her usual post-lunch coffee over by the kitchenette. She spotted Ted and started to wave before recollecting that she was holding a carafe full of boiling liquid. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Kord.”

“Happy afternoon to you too. I meant to come in at ten, but I slept like the dead last night,” Ted complained, stifling a yawn. He put down the box and popped open the lid, offering her first dibs on the fresh, warm sticky buns. The smell of cinnamon and sugary caramel blended perfectly with the coffee fumes, and he felt his mouth water. To distract himself from the pastries’ siren call, he waddled off to put away his coat. “Help yourself, Ang. I’d like to state for the record that I managed to drive here from the bakery without eating one.” 

Angie pried one of the rolls out, setting it daintily on a napkin and pouring out some coffee for herself. She had a vast collection of novelty mugs, but the one she’d chosen today was Ted’s favorite, featuring portraits of small dogs dressed like eighteenth-century French nobility. (Ted had borrowed it so often that she’d bought him one of his own for Hannukah a few years back.) “Thanks, boss. Would you like some coffee?” 

“I’ve been cut off,” Ted said bitterly. “New meds and no caffeine. So yeah, maybe give me like a fourth of a cup. Compared to my usual ten cups a day, that counts as nothing.” As he hung his jacket on the row of wall pegs, he noticed that Mel’s plaid raincoat was still on its hook. “Mel hasn’t left for lunch yet?” 

“Not yet. Ms. Case was here when I came in at 6:30,” said Angie. 

Ted frowned. Mel was a notorious workaholic, but it wasn’t like her to roll out of bed before sunrise. She was a night owl who preferred to work past closing if it meant that she didn’t have to look at other people (namely Ted) until mid-morning. “Did she have an early meeting today?” he asked, accepting his coffee, which was classily served in a mug that proclaimed him a ‘ _Basic Bitch_ ’ in glittery cursive. “Thanks, kiddo.”

“Nothing on the docket, boss.” Angie followed him out of the staff room to the elevator. Sweet lass that she was, she courteously kept pace with him, even though he was moving like an arthritic turtle wearing medical-grade stockings. 

“Huh.” Ted made a mental note to stop by Mel’s office and check up on her as soon as he’d read his email. He hoped that she hadn’t had a blow-out with Randall again. “Oh, hey, how was that show?”

The elevator door slid shut behind them, and Angie keyed in the passcode for the administrative floor. “Musicals aren’t usually to my taste,” she admitted, “but it was a nice way to spend a Saturday. Aunt Penny adored it, so I’m glad we went.” 

“You’ve had songs stuck in your head all day, I bet.” Ted inhaled the steam from his coffee greedily and watched the floors glide past before adding, very casually, “You know, a little birdie told me that the new TecTronics sales rep has been spending a lot of time in this building lately.” 

From the corner of his eye, he watched Angie hunch into herself, raising her coffee and roll-laden napkin like she thought she could hide behind them. She cleared her throat noisily, the tips of her ears turning pink. “I’m not sure what you mean, boss.” 

“Has she asked you out to dinner yet?” he prodded.

“I don’t think we should be having this conversation.” 

Ted made a _pooh-pooh_ ing gesture, letting her exit the elevator first. “Oh, come on. How many years have you worked for me? I know the names of all your cats. You know my inseam measurements. We have each other’s Indian takeout order memorized. That practically makes us best friends.” 

“Miss DeWitt’s a very nice woman, Mr. Kord,” Angie conceded, adjusting her glasses nervously as she sat down at her desk, “but there’s nothing to . . . dish about. I don’t . . . I’m sure she wouldn’t be interested.” 

“Why the hell not?” Ted demanded. “Not to be inappropriate----” 

“Of course not, boss.”

“----but you’re a doll, Revere, and smart as a tack, and patient enough to qualify for sainthood. She’d be lucky to take you out. You know, I used to play wingman for Mel, back in our grad school days. I can arrange something for you and DeWitt. Here, how’s this: we’ll call it a business lunch.” 

She blinked owlishly at him. “Is that legal?” 

“Technically, yes. Ethically, it's dubious. Still, what’s life without a few risks?” 

Ted’s cell rang, and he slipped it from his pocket to check the caller ID. It was Bea. Smiling apologetically at Angie – who looked relieved to have their conversation cut short -- he ducked into his office and accepted the call. “Beetle’s House of Circuit Breakers, you buy ‘em, we fry ‘em.” 

“Ted, get your ass home. _Now_.” 

The bottom dropped out of Ted’s stomach. “What happened?” 

There was a cacophony of heartfelt, inventive cursing in the background; Ted could pick out Booster’s voice, and Guy’s. “Just get over here,” Bea snapped before hanging up on him. 

Ted drove home like a madman, circumventing the noon traffic via a series of backroads and side-streets, and by some miracle he made it to Highland Park in twenty minutes without being pulled over. Tires squealing, he planted the car along the curb and hobbled up the front walk. There was a conspicuous lack of screaming from inside his house, which only served to make him more anxious. With friends like his, silence was an ill omen. Surely nobody could be too badly hurt, because Bea would have called from the hospital, but the urgency and lack of explanation were worrisome. Maybe someone had gotten infected with a nano-virus, or hit by an unknown energy weapon, or had their eternal soul sucked into a computer.

He’d gotten himself well and truly flustered by the time he wrestled the front door open. Bursting into the living room dramatically, he found Fire and Ice, in costume, sitting on his couch and drinking iced tea. 

“What’s this?” he barked, clutching his chest. “Damn it, da Costa, I need to watch my blood pressure! I spent the whole drive over here thinking that someone was dying!”

“Right now someone is wishing they were,” Bea said darkly. 

Looking upset, Tora extended a beseeching hand toward him. “Oh, Ted, we didn’t mean to scare you. Are you okay?”

“Speak for yourself.” Bea slammed her glass down on the end table, tea sloshing over its sides. “I don’t want to spend another minute in this stupid city, in this stupid house, with this stupid . . . .this stupid. . . .” She made a noise of pure, distilled vexation. “. . . . this butthead!”

“Tora?”

“No! Not Tora, you moron! _Booster!_ ” Tiny emerald-colored flames began licking at Bea’s temples, and Ted took a few wary steps back. 

“Bea,” Tora chided, bravely tucking one hand into the crook of Bea’s elbow. “Remember what happened last week, in the hotel? Max said the fire department really is getting tired of these calls.”

Bea growled. The flames slowly receded, leaving a lingering stink of sulphur in the air.

Ted glanced askance at Skeets, who was hovering by the door with a fire extinguisher clutched in one claw. “Mind telling me what’s going on, pal? Where’s Booster? What happened?”

“Mr. Gold is currently in the guest room. Several things have occurred over the past hour that defy explanation, sir.”

“There was an incident,” Tora began.

“Damn right there was an incident,” Bea interrupted sourly. “Booster’s off the team.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Are you deaf, Kord? He’s off the team. He’s done.”

“What are you _talking_ about? You can’t just----”

“He beat the shit out of an unarmed civilian!” Bea shouted, eyes flashing a furious electric green. “He lost his fucking marbles, Ted! Gardner had to put him into a wall to stop him from killing the man.”

Ted stared at her, stunned. Booster was no hothead. In fact, he was easy-going to a fault; he could make a scene with the best of them if he was pushed hard enough, but it took a lot to get him there. “I don’t understand,” he said helplessly. “Maybe it was mind-control, or a chemical weapon? God knows we’ve seen weirder things.”

“Not this time,” said Tora glumly. Her disappointment wasn’t even directed toward him, but Ted found himself cringing inside. There were few things in the world more gut-wrenching than living with the fact that you’d shaken Tora’s faith in you. “Booster had a lead on a career criminal and asked us to help track him down. He said this gentleman was someone dangerous who needed to be picked up. An arsonist.”

Ted’s mouth went dry. “I don’t suppose the man’s name was Fleeter?”

“Booster said he was one of your rogues.”

“Years ago, yes, but he went straight. He’s not in the business anymore.” 

“Well, Gold neglected to mention that irrelevant fact,” Bea bit out. “We went to contain an active threat and found an old man who begged us not to tell his wife and swore on his mother’s grave that he hadn’t broken the law in years. And then Booster accused him of trying to kill _you_ , and the next thing we knew, he had the guy on the floor.” A muscle in her jaw leapt. “His wife’s going to be scrubbing blood out of their carpet.”

Ted slowly sank down next to Tora on the couch, feeling a little nauseous. “So,” he began, before he realized that he had no idea what to say. 

“So,” Tora echoed sadly. She brushed her snowy hair behind her ear. “That’s why we called you. We didn’t think it was a good idea to let him be alone right now.” 

“Make sure he doesn’t go to the Hub City hospital to finish the job.” 

“Beatriz, please,” Tora sighed. “You are not helping.”

Bea huffed, yanking her arm from Tora’s grasp and standing up. “We need to talk damage control with Max and the lawyers. Keep a tight leash on him, would you, Beetle? He’s fucked up enough things today.” 

Tora gave Bea an unhappy look before turning to place a gentle hand on Ted’s knee. “Will you two be okay here?” 

He nodded, giving her delicate fingers a squeeze. Under normal circumstances, he would never be able to say this with any sincerity, but today was apparently a day for atypical behavior. “Will you thank Guy? If he hadn’t stopped him, he. . . . Tora, he’d never forgive himself.”

Tora’s eyes were soft and pitying. “I’ll tell him.”

Ted escorted the girls to the door, Skeets bobbing solemnly behind them. On the porch, Bea hesitated. “He gave the man a concussion, Ted,” she said. “I couldn’t just let it go.” 

“I know.”

“Max agreed. Booster’s been distracted for weeks, and now he’s a lawsuit risk.”

“I know, Bea. You did what you had to do. I’ve got him.”

Ted closed the door and then sagged against it for a minute. Once he felt equal to the task, he walked back into the living room and collected the glasses from the table, wiping up the spilled tea with the tail of his dress shirt. Booster liked a tidy house. It was why they’d never made very good roommates. 

“Is he sleeping, Skeets?” he asked. 

“I don’t believe so, sir.” 

Ted went upstairs, pausing halfway up to catch his breath. He tapped perfunctorily on Booster’s door before cracking it open and poking his head inside. The lights were off. Booster was sprawled on top of the covers, lying on his side with his knees pulled toward his chest. His costume top had been thrown on the floor, but he was still wearing the tights. 

Ted stepped inside and shut the door, ignoring Skeets’s indignant beep as he was abandoned to the mercies of the hallway. “Hey, man.”

Booster curled in on himself like a sad pillbug. 

It was a queen-size mattress, so Ted slipped off his dress shoes and stretched out, loosening his tie and stealing one of the pillows. Booster didn’t say a word, but he shifted to make room. For a while, they just lay there. Finally, Booster uncurled, rolling onto his back. He was staring fixedly at the ceiling, but there were tear tracks drying on his cheeks. 

Ted hated seeing Booster like this. Sure, Booster could be protective, but not to the degree of beating an elderly ex-crook who hadn’t so much as looked at Ted in twenty years. Everything about the situation was extraordinary.

Adrift, a little horrified by how close they’d come to disaster, he suddenly remembered the night Booster had gone after Rubenico. Booster had nearly killed a man then too, so wildly out of control and so blinded by rage that Ted, for the first and only time in their long friendship, had been momentarily afraid of him. In that instance, his motives had been simple to understand -- a chance for revenge, a chance to absolve himself from the shame of his past -- and Booster had listened to reason and stopped himself before he crossed a line he couldn’t come back from. 

This time, evidently, he hadn’t.

There were a few things that Ted could have said. Comforting things. Darkly funny things. Nothing seemed quite right, though, and the silence felt too fragile to break -- he didn’t want to shatter Booster along with it. So he lay there quietly, picking at loose threads on the blanket. Booster was clearly trying to hide the occasional hitch in his breath, but eventually, he calmed. As the tension gradually drained out of his body, the air grew warm and close between them.

Ted waited until Booster’s breathing steadied and deepened before he closed his eyes. 

***

Without superheroing to fill his days, Booster seemed to be at loose ends. When he wasn’t jogging or spending hours at the gym, he overflowed with a slightly manic energy that manifested itself in a cleaning spree. He scrubbed Ted’s kitchen, dusted the banisters, vacuumed every inch of carpet in the house -- Ted even caught him using his power suit to rearrange the furniture. 

Ted let him, at a loss as to how to make things better. When he was depressed, he binged on junk food and watched an embarrassing amount of television, but Booster’s frenetic productivity was a different kettle of fish entirely. It felt ungrateful to complain about someone mopping his kitchen floor and alphabetizing his bookshelves, even though this bout of spring cleaning was messing up Ted’s carefully-cultivated chaos. 

Although he knew it was misplaced, Ted couldn’t help but feel guilty. He’d been too flippant about Fleeter, and obviously Booster had been dwelling on it, building up the threat in his head. They were both jumpy, after all of the late-night ER visits and new restrictions; Booster had been remarking for a solid week on how pasty and pale Ted’s complexion was, and Ted had laughed him off. Maybe he should have rested more often and let Booster fuss over him a little more. Maybe he should never have told Booster about Fleeter in the first place. If Booster hadn’t been feeling so rattled, maybe he wouldn’t have overreacted and punched the one threat to Ted’s life that could actually be punched.

In any case, what was done was done. Max had called to let them know that Fleeter had declined to press charges, but the Corps would foot the bill for his medical expenses as a compensatory gesture. Bea and Booster were no longer on speaking terms, but Tora had assured Ted that their fiery friend wouldn’t hold a grudge for long. There was, however, no talk of reinstating Booster to the team. 

For his part, Booster seemed to cycle between resentment, self-loathing, and overly optimistic prognostications involving Bea pleading for his forgiveness and petitioning him on bended knee to return. Ted listened without argument, exchanging dubious looks with Skeets, but as the days passed, Booster began to take the opposite tack, going so far as to leave the room mid-conversation if Ted happened to mention Bea or Guy. 

This felt like something they needed to talk about, but every time Ted started to bend the conversation toward it, Booster clammed up. He clearly had no intention of seriously discussing what had happened. It worried Ted, because the Corps was important to Booster, and this had to be a blow to him. Not only was he grounded while his teammates were off throwing themselves into danger, but he’d been hoping that the Corps would be his next big break, his chance to finally be taken seriously as a hero. Even though Ted had given up on it long ago, Booster was forever looking for that validation -- validation that was, knowing the Justice League, probably never going to come. 

While Ted rarely had problems broaching hard subjects with his friend, there were a few exceptions. He didn’t want to sound accusatory, because that was the last thing a guy needed after being fired, but he wasn’t going to underplay it either, because that wasn’t how he and Booster were with each other. They didn’t pussyfoot around disagreements or let conflicts fester. They aired their grievances (loudly and at length) and then made up and moved on. This odd not-fighting-but-not-really-talking middle ground was unusual. 

It left Ted feeling tense and off-balance, he and Booster avoiding each other’s orbit while pretending that they weren’t. This wasn’t something that he could fix for his friend. All he could do was stock up on cleaning supplies and wait until Booster was ready to talk. 

***

Ted dropped into his office chair and immediately dug into his usual order from Salad Shack, wrestling with the cellophane around the plastic spork. His appetite had been poor lately, but today he was positively ravenous, and he shoveled in his lunch with single-minded focus. 

Murray would be back for a meeting at 12:30, so Ted had twenty minutes to himself. He’d come in early today for a shareholder conference call that he couldn’t miss, and he was feeling the effects of it. His feet were no longer swollen, but they still ached like a bitch, and he’d been flirting with a headache all morning. 

The three-bean and tofu salad disappeared obscenely quickly. Sipping at a water bottle, Ted pawed through his messenger bag for his pillbox. He smiled a little at the gold star stickers that papered it -- courtesy of Booster -- and flicked open the compartment for today’s afternoon meds. 

Seeing the mound of pills laid out in front of him reminded Ted of his grandmother. Nana Kord had been a wisp of a thing, but by sheer stubborn grit, she’d lived to the ripe old age of 97. Ted could vividly remember sitting on her bed to read a bedtime story, watching her count out her nightly pills from what seemed to him like an endless stash of orange bottles. She’d been a hard woman, stern-faced, with no tolerance for nonsense, but for some inexplicable reason, she’d liked Ted. Because he never tried to put the pills into his mouth, she sometimes allowed him to help sort the dozens of candy-colored capsules and tablets, dropping them into the proper slots in her pillbox. It had been a sort of game for them. 

Ted eyed his own pillbox, which had gotten fuller with each passing year. Shiny stars aside, it didn’t seem like much of a game now. 

By the time Murray returned, the meds had been dutifully swallowed and the box tucked away. Murray was carrying a grease-soaked paper bag from Del Taco and looking harried. “Hey, do you mind if I eat lunch here? I was running late.”

“Knock yourself out,” Ted said, managing not to sound too envious. Del Taco had been his favorite drunk-food establishment after a long night on the town. He and Booster and Scott had often found themselves sitting in a soda-sticky Del Taco booth at three am and splitting a party combo pack to soak up the booze. Ted could practically still taste the soggy corn shells and reconstituted meat slurry. God, it’d been ages since they’d done that. 

Maybe he’d stop by Del Taco after work and buy Booster a few, for old times’ sake. It might cheer him up. 

“Wexler and I have some good candidates this fall,” Murray said around an enormous mouthful of taco. “Did you get the files I sent you?” 

“Yeah, they just came in. Let me put them up on the projector.” 

They flipped through the internship applicants together, debating the merits of each. The applications were blind, but the questionnaires and ability tests were very thorough, and extremely comprehensive background checks would be processed on the finalists before hiring. The last thing Kord Omniversal needed was a budding evil mastermind getting access to all the advanced tech in the complex. 

He and Murray went back and forth, arguing amicably, veering off into the occasional tangent, and Ted was feeling good about this new crop of interns. 

The next thing he knew, someone was shaking his shoulder roughly. 

“Ted? Roomie, wake up.” 

Ted’s eyes flew open, and it took him a moment to realize that he was still in his office, which now smelled like tacos. His stomach roiled. Murray was leaning over him, one palm cupped steadingly against Ted’s back. He looked worried. “Hey, you okay?”

“What?”

“Ted, you fell asleep mid-sentence.”

“Oh.” Ted wiped at a bit of drool in the corner of his mouth, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Are you sure you’re okay? You were out like a light. That doesn’t seem normal.” 

“I’m good,” Ted assured him. “It happened at a marketing meeting on Wednesday too.”

The furrow between Murray’s eyebrows deepened. “Are you serious?” 

“Don’t look at me like that. Sanderson was presenting. Everyone falls asleep when he’s talking.” 

Pushing back his chair, Murray began to gather up his trash and got up to throw it away. “I think we’re done here.”

“We didn’t finish,” Ted objected. “There are still three candidates left.”

Murray walked back over to his chair, but he didn’t sit down. Instead, he leaned over Ted’s shoulder and shut down the projector. 

“Hey!” 

“Do you remember that Halloween party that you dragged me to our sophomore year of undergrad?” Murray asked.

Ted wracked his brain wearily and came up with nothing. “I don’t, actually.”

“I’m not surprised. You drank most of a bottle of Boone’s Farm in ten minutes and puked in a potted plant, and then I sat with you in the bathroom for an hour because you were absolutely convinced that you were going to vomit up your own stomach lining and die.”

“Your point being?” 

Murray rubbed the back of his neck. “My point is that I sat on the disgusting, germ-ridden floor of a frat bathroom for you, so would you try not to get mad at me for saying this?”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“You fell asleep like a narcoleptic, and you just admitted that you’ve done it before. You’re not winning martyr points for dragging yourself to work when you’re not feeling well.” 

“Okay, two things: one, I’m an adult,” Ted said irritably. “Two, you’re literally not the boss of me.” 

A sheepish, almost apologetic look crossed Murray’s face before he squared his jaw. “I’ll tell Mel,” he threatened.

Ted sucked in a betrayed breath. “Traitor.” 

“Look,” Murray said sincerely, “I’m saying this as a friend, Roomie, not because I’m angling for a better pension. Anyone else in your position would have gone on medical leave weeks ago. This company’s not going to fall apart without you. Go home. Watch some TV. Relax and stop trying to control everything for once in your life. At least think about it.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Ted said grudgingly. 

Ted’s phone rang, and Murray got up to leave. 

“Murray?” Ted called after him, covering the receiver with his palm. “Thanks, man.” 

With a half-smile, Murray flashed him the Vulcan salute and slipped out the door. 

“Kord Omniversal Research and Design, Ted Kord speaking.”

“Hello, Mr. Kord,” an unfamiliar, overly bubbly voice trilled. “This is Deanna at St. Marceline’s Surgical Center. You called earlier today inquiring about your pre-op?”

“Oh, I was hoping to hear from you! Yes, I did.” 

“I’ve pulled up your account, and it looks like the pre-op was removed from the roster. There’s a note that you contacted us last Tuesday to cancel your June 14th appointment with Dr. Lemure.”

“What?” Ted exclaimed, taken aback. “I didn’t cancel it. There must be some mistake.”

“Just a moment, please. I’ll put you on hold.” 

Ted listened to the strains of tinny jazz, jiggling one leg nervously. Shit, he should have checked ages ago, back when he first thought there might be a problem with the scheduling. St. Marcy’s was a busy center, and if his appointment was cancelled, someone else had undoubtedly snapped up the open slot. What if they couldn’t fit him in again for weeks? 

After a few ear-rending repetitions of _Little Brown Jug_ , Deanna finally returned to the line. “I’m sorry for the wait, Mr. Kord. According to our call logs, the cancellation was made at two in the afternoon, from the home telephone number that you provided to us.”

“That can’t be right,” Ted protested. “I didn’t---- Oh.”

“Mr. Kord? Are you there?”

Ted lifted a hand to his forehead and took a deep, steadying breath. In and out. “Must have slipped my mind. Could you help me set up a new appointment with Dr. Lemure, Deanna?”

When Ted came out of his office five minutes later, Angie was playing solitaire at the desk. She glanced up as he locked his door and then did a double-take. 

“Boss, are you okay? You don’t look so good.” 

“Bit of a headache. If anything comes up, shoot me an email or call Mel. I’m going home.”

***

By the time Ted got through mid-afternoon traffic to Highland Park, he’d worked himself up into a cold rage. Booster’s bike was parked in the garage; when he came inside, Ted could hear voices coming from the upstairs bathroom. He followed the sound, his pulse pounding.

Booster was scrubbing the sink while Skeets was wiping down the bathtub, a flowered shower cap stretched over his screen. Hearing Ted’s footsteps on the carpet, Booster twisted around to look at him. “Hey, Teddy,” he chirped. “Is it six already? Must have lost track of time.”

Ted leaned against the doorjamb. “No,” he said levelly. “I just decided to leave early today. I’ve got a funny story.”

“Yeah? Lay it on me.”

“Oh, I will. You remember how I had that pre-op appointment at St. Marcy’s that was supposed to be scheduled for me soon? You remember how confused I was that they hadn’t gotten around to doing it?”

Booster had gone very still. If Ted had had any doubts about what he’d done, that constipated, guilty look would have erased them entirely.

“And I thought, man, you’d think they’d want to get me in there sooner rather than later, considering how urgent they said it was, and Dr. Lemure wanted to do the operation before the end of the summer. So I thought I’d better see what the hold-up was.” 

“Ted . . . .”

“Shut up, Michael, I’m telling you a story,” Ted said icily. “I called up Dr. Lemure’s nurse, and the scheduling clerk called back to tell me that they’d set up an appointment for me weeks ago but it had been cancelled. By me. Except I never called them. Isn’t that weird? So I thought, it obviously must have been done by someone pretending to be me, someone who had access to my landline and personal information.”

Booster was practically squirming now. 

“By some miracle, I was able to get a new one ten days from now, because -- go figure -- appointments with world-class heart surgeons aren’t as easy as ordering a pizza, and now my operation is almost certainly going to be delayed. Oh, and I never got a notice of the first appointment. Did you steal my mail? That’s a felony.”

Skeets made an unhappy sound. “I tried to tell you, sir. . . . ”

“Stay out of this,” Booster snarled.

Skeets wisely chose to get the hell out of Dodge. Ted stepped back to let the robot zip past before saying, with forced nonchalance, “You know, I trusted you to have my best interests in mind. It’s not in my best interests to die before I’m forty years old.”

“I wouldn’t let you die.”

And there went Ted’s composure. “It’s not up to you, unless you can pull a magic ring that grants you the powers of a surgeon out of your lying ass!”

Booster threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t know! I don’t know what I was thinking, okay? I just wanted more time. You didn’t let me have enough time to come up with the solution----”

“What are you babbling about?”

“----the solution that doesn’t involve a bunch of insane savages cracking open your ribs and sticking their tubes inside you!”

Ted gaped at him. “Did you cancel my mandatory appointment just because you feel icky about modern medicine?”

“See, I knew you wouldn’t understand! I knew you’d get hysterical----”

“Hysterical?!”

“So I was going to tell you about it once I’d gotten ahold of Rip ----”

“Oh my God, you want to bring _that_ asshole into this?” Ted cried, incredulous. “Why don’t we let G’nort do the surgery while we’re at it?”

“Just listen,” Booster snapped. “It’s a great plan. It’s better than yours! I’ll make a deal with Rip and bring you to the future, and I’ll get you a procedure with actual doctors, and you can have a brand-new heart.”

“Listen to yourself. Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be? What if I altered history and caused a paradox? What if someone discovered that I was from the past? Any doctor would probably be able to tell I wasn’t from your time with a simple blood test! We could both be arrested and executed.” 

But Booster was shaking his head, chin jutting out stubbornly. “I could do it! I could sneak you in, find you a doctor who would keep things hush-hush.”

“For fuck’s sake, look at me,” Ted shouted, voice catching. “I’m sick, Booster! What the hell makes you think I could survive time travel?”

There was a wild look blooming in Booster’s eyes. He was hunching his shoulders in, his back arched almost like a cornered cat. “Shut up, shut up, okay? It could work. I’ll find a way to make it work. I can get you a new heart. You can have one that won’t fail. You’ll be totally back to normal, you won’t be defective! I can----”

“ _Stop._ ” Ted sucked in several deep, uneven breaths, trying and failing to remember the breathing techniques he’d learned from his therapist. “This isn’t a game,” he managed. “No, for the love of God, _don’t talk_. I don’t need to consult Rip Hunter or travel to the future or let a robot implant any new lab-grown organs in me. What I need is an operation at St. Marcy’s before the end of this year. That’s what I need.” 

“There are other options,” Booster said, half begging and half defiant. “Give me more time. Let me fix this. I want to. I can find the best way, I know it. I can _do_ this.”

Ted’s headache was creeping back with a vengeance, and suddenly he couldn’t even stand to look at Booster. A bone-deep exhaustion weighed down his limbs, so many parts of himself being pulled in different directions until he was stretched out like taffy. Or Ralph. “I don’t give a fuck what you want. I’m having the surgery. I’m done fighting with you about this.” His temples throbbed, and he couldn’t suppress a hiss. 

He felt Booster make an aborted movement next to him. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t deal with you right now.” 

“Ted, you’re being ridiculous. . . . “

“No! This isn’t an opportunity for you to save the day and reap the glory. You don’t get to gamble with my life, and I don’t have the energy to listen to you make my shitty, failing health all about _you_ _!_ God, I’ve spent years telling people that you’re not as damned selfish as you pretend to be, but sometimes you make it hard to say that with a straight face.”

“I. . . I should go,” Booster said hoarsely. 

“I think you should.” Ted turned around and grabbed the foaming sponge, picking up where Booster had left off and determinedly not looking in the mirror. After a pause, he heard Booster walk away. The door to the guest room creaked open, and there were sounds of clothes being pulled from the closet, drawers being opened and closed, and a bag being zipped. The footsteps returned to the doorway of the bathroom, hesitating. 

Ted kept scrubbing. 

Booster went downstairs. In short order, a motorcycle engine purred to life, and then the house was quiet. Ted let the sponge drop into the bottom of the sink and bent over, running a hand over his face. He felt shaky with adrenaline and faintly sick, like how he used to feel after a big mission with the League. He needed a glass of water and some food and a full night of sleep. 

His head buzzing, Ted went downstairs, only to hear someone opening a cupboard. Stepping into the kitchen, he found Skeets hovering over the stove with a box of nutrition bars clutched in one claw. 

“What are you doing here?” 

Skeets drifted over to him. He was still wearing the shower cap, and there was a pale streak of dried soap across his display. He handed Ted the nutrition bars. “Booster requested that I stay to ensure that you are well, sir. He was most adamant.” 

Ted closed his eyes, his throat miserably tight. 

“Ted?”

“Go on, Skeets. He needs you more than I do.” 

“As you wish, sir.”

Ted opened the back door for him and lingered on the porch, watching until the small gold sphere was swallowed up by low-hanging clouds. 

* * *

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the sweet aroma of soap opera drama!
> 
> Btw, if you haven’t read the referenced issue of Justice League Quarterly #10 (1993) where Booster confronts Rubenico, the ancestor of the crime boss who got him trapped in the gambling racket that ruined his football career, give it a read. It’s a bittersweet Booster-centric story about revenge, forgiveness, and the futility of shifting blame for your own bad choices; it’s also a wonderful showcase of the depth of Ted and Booster’s friendship, as Ted and the League go after him to stop him from making a terrible mistake. It takes a real friend to call you on your shit and tell you the hard truths.


	5. Five

* * *

FIVE

* * *

* * *

It was Tuesday, and Ted was bored out of his ever-loving mind. 

He’d spent most of the week in bed, but he couldn’t seem to relax. He’d tried reading, but he found himself staring blankly at the pages, having absorbed nothing. He tried sketching a few designs, but things wouldn’t shape up the way he wanted. Movies put him right to sleep. And when he did sleep, he woke up feeling more tired, with fractured recollections of uneasy dreams. 

In frustration, he’d finally hauled himself out of bed, and now he was puttering uselessly around the kitchen. It was strange, not knowing what to do with himself. He’d learned from an early age how to be comfortable with solitude, filling his time with hobbies and projects; it irked him that his house felt so unbearably quiet now, still as a mausoleum. The old Ted, who had brimmed with vim and vigor, would never have let it get so empty -- it would have been filled with activity, with friends, with noise and chaos. But the new Ted, who shuffled around sulkily in his stockings and bathrobe, seemed to suit its sedate silence perfectly well. 

Ted wasn’t so sure he liked this new Ted.

Maybe he needed to go out. He needed to do something fun, something distracting. He needed to spend some time in a place that wasn’t his house or the doctor’s office. A change of pace, that was what he needed. 

Ted unearthed his phone from the couch cushions and nearly pressed speed dial before he remembered that he couldn’t go out with Booster. For a moment, it honestly threw him -- they hadn’t had a blow-out like this since the Conglomerate fiasco, so he was a bit rusty about how to go about being in a fight with his best friend. He could maturely acknowledge that this stalemate had lasted long enough, act his age, make the call, and offer Booster the chance to give the apology that would put them on the path to reconciling. 

Ted dialed the Frees instead. 

Two hours later, he was sitting at a Bowling Hut snack bar with Scott and Oberon, watching Barda argue with the manager about the gaping hole in the floor of their lane. 

Scott cracked open his second can of root beer. “I knew this was a bad idea.” 

Ted took a sip of his sad, boring water, scooting his stool over so he could see better. The manager was windmilling his arms now, and even perched up on his tiptoes, he didn’t reach Barda’s elbows. The lady herself was looking unimpressed. She was still holding her bowling ball too. Ted thought the manager was either courageous or moronic. “It was fine until the last round. She gets intense about winning.”

“You should have seen what happened when we joined the neighborhood volleyball team,” said Scott glumly.

Oberon pulled a face. “Don’t remind me.” 

“To be fair, those floorboards aren’t reinforced for super strength,” Ted noted. 

The argument below had reached an alarming decibel, and the word ‘lawsuit’ was being tossed around; Oberon rolled his eyes and hopped down from his stool after throwing a few crumpled bills on the counter. “I’d better go take care of this before we end up in the clink. Again. You two fruit loops finish up your drinks. We’ll probably need to make a speedy exit.” 

Scott saluted as Oberon went off to join the fray and then swiveled around on his stool. “What’s the deal with the not-talking?”

“The not-talking?”

“You’ve been quiet since we got here. It makes me nervous when you’re quiet.” He lowered his voice. “You didn’t get more bad news, did you?”

“Oh. No, no, nothing like that. I’m fine.” 

“Did you and Booster get in a fight?”

Ted sputtered. “What makes you say that?”

“He’s not here, and you’re in a bad mood.” 

“You _are_ aware that we’re two individual adults who have entirely separate and fulfilling lives apart from each other?”

“Sure,” Scott agreed, “but you’ve also lived out of each other’s pockets for as long as I’ve known you, and he loves bowling. I’m pretty sure he’d be here under normal circumstances. Since he’s not, I’m guessing you had a fight. Process of elimination.”

“You need to stop talking to Ralph,” Ted said sourly. 

Scott looked amused. “So you did have a fight. What did he do this time?”

“What makes you think he did anything?” The direction the conversation was going was making his stomach feel vaguely queasy. 

“Well, it’s Booster.”

“He’s not stupid,” Ted snapped. 

“No,” Scott said, with exaggerated patience, “but he doesn’t have a lot of people, Ted. You have your friends, and your company, and the Reyes kid, and all of us. Booster has us too, but it’s not the same. I was there when he joined, remember? You were the one he connected with, straight away. He doesn’t have the best track record of thinking things through when you’re in trouble. I can’t say I was surprised that he lost it on that guy.” 

Ted winced reflexively. He knew Booster had been hoping that the grapevine wouldn’t latch on to that particular bit of gossip. “You heard about that?”

“Barda and Beatriz meet up to spar every other weekend. She’s still pretty mad at him.”

“She does know how to hold a grudge,” Ted muttered. “And it’s not just about that.” 

Scott gave him a curious look, tilting his head; Ted shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wondering what his friend could see. “You know he’s probably running scared, don’t you?” 

Oh, he knew Booster was running scared. Truthfully, Ted wasn’t even angry anymore; he might have preferred to be, since anger was cleaner and easier to cope with than resentment, guilt, and regret. Worst of all, the anger had been its own kind of protection, a shell over the more nebulous feeling of _hurt_. He was a big boy, but he was tired. He was tired of being sick, tired of being tired, of dealing with Booster’s crises, of reassuring everyone else when he felt like he was barely holding himself together with frayed threads as it was. 

“Ted?” Scott asked, sounding concerned, and Ted realized he’d been silent too long. “Are you alright?”

“Can we not talk about it?” Ted asked, and he hated how raw his voice sounded. “Please.” 

“Okay.” Scott swiveled around on his stool and became focused on wiping all the condensation from his pop, giving Ted some privacy to pull himself together while managing to give the impression that he wasn’t. For a guy who’d grown up in a literal hellscape, he was one of the most compassionate people Ted knew. 

Once Ted had gotten a grip on himself, Scott asked him casually how work was going.

“I wouldn’t know.” Ted grimaced at the waspishness in his own voice. If he kept on like this, he’d end up becoming a bonafide curmudgeon. “Sorry.”

“Did something happen?”

“I’m officially on medical leave. I thought I wouldn’t have to stop working until I had the operation, but a friend of mine gave me a come-to-Jesus talk, and my GP agreed. I’m banned from the office, and Mel had me blocked from the server. I could hack into it, but I’m not up to getting chewed out right now.” Ted rubbed the back of his neck and then reluctantly admitted, “I called my dad earlier this week. Left him a voicemail explaining about everything.” 

Scott, who had been privy to various episodes of Kord family drama over the years, made a sympathetic noise. “What did he say?”

“He never called back. I mean, I didn’t really expect anything else. The man’s never met a problem he couldn’t run away from. Heck, when Mom was in hospice, he came to visit her exactly once. Compared to that, this is small beans.” 

“Obviously it isn’t small beans,” Scott pointed out. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought it up.” 

Ted fiddled with the label on his water bottle, prying it off. “It’s just that it would have been nice to know that he gave a damn, at least a little.” 

“Maybe he doesn’t know what to say.”

“We’ve never had much to say to each other. Too different, you know? And he has the emotional awareness of a bran muffin. To him, people are just tools -- use them when you need them and then put them aside when you don’t. I’ll never understand what Mom saw in him.” 

Scott chuckled, but it sounded rueful. “What is it with fathers?”

Ted elbowed his friend gently. “I guess Highfather wasn’t winning any parenting awards either. You turned out mostly okay, though.” 

“Gee, thanks,” Scott said, grinning. 

“Maybe Dad’ll manage to show up for my funeral.” Ted propped his chin on his hands and smirked. “You all know the plan for the service, right? The Elvis impersonator is negotiable if you can’t get one on short notice, but you simply must have the mariachi band.”

“I’ve got them on speed dial,” Scott promised. His gaze flicked over Ted’s shoulder, and his eyes widened. “Wait, where’s she going? Barda!”

Ted twisted around. Out the Bowling Hut windows, he could see Scott’s beloved cherry-red MG convertible -- with Barda at the wheel -- peeling out of the parking lot, tires squealing and smoking, and rocket across three lanes of honking traffic. 

“My car!”

“Time to split, kiddos.” Oberon strolled up to the snack bar, tucking a wallet back into his jeans pocket. “Looks like we’ll have to take the bus. You want another soda to go? You might need one.”

“Why’d she leave without me?” Scott asked, looking wounded.

“She’s mad at me for taking the manager’s side, so she said I could walk home.”

“Yeah, but what about _us_?” Ted demanded. “Why are we guilty by association?”

“Tough luck, Beetle,” Oberon said. “And Scotty? You owe me three hundred bucks. Bowling lane repair ain’t cheap.”

***

“Ted? Dr. Lemure will see you now.” 

With all the time he’d spent in waiting rooms, Ted had started to actually enjoy reading ancient back issues of whatever magazines were on offer. He made a game of finding the most ridiculous articles and sending them to Barbara. Today he’d found a _Cat Fancy_ from the late 80s that featured an ad for an animal psychic named Madame Mistoffelees, and he quickly snapped a picture before gathering his things and following the nurse into the corridor. 

The nurse made short work of taking his vitals and putting him in an examination room, and the doctor didn’t keep him waiting long either. Having met more than a few surgeons in his time, Ted had expected a strait-laced, humorless old man, or perhaps a smug hotshot fresh out of medical school. Dr. Lemure was about Ted’s age, with a round, smiling face, a clipped New England accent, and a propensity for poking fun at his own beer belly as he asked about Ted’s diet and exercise routines. He listened intently to Ted’s heart and lungs and examined the skin around his ankles. 

“The swelling’s gone down nicely,” he noted. “Your rhythm and pulse are in line with what’s normal for you, and your color is good. I’m concerned about the episodes of fatigue you reported on your intake form. Have you ever been diagnosed with sleep apnea?”

Ted shook his head. 

“When you had these episodes, were you dizzy? Did you collapse or lose consciousness?”

“No and no,” Ted said. “I just fell asleep suddenly.” 

Dr. Lemure nodded, making a note on his tablet. “Okay. And you haven’t had this happen recently?”

“Not since that week.”

“Would you say that you were under stress at the time these episodes occurred?”

Ted couldn’t help but laugh, and Dr. Lemure grinned at him. 

“Silly question, I know,” the doctor said amiably. 

“I was at work both times it happened,” Ted said. “I’ve been staying at home lately, and I feel like I’ve had more energy. So I guess my stress levels have decreased, in that respect.”

“Good. I’m inclined to think that the incidents are related to the AVS rather than a separate issue; should it continue after your operation, we can revisit the idea of a sleep study. Now, if this does happen again, I’d like you to go to a clinic to get your vitals checked; if you experience any chest pains or arrhythmia along with it, you’re to go straight to the hospital. Understood?” 

“Understood.” Ted shifted on the exam table, rubbing a hand over his chest. “When you say it’s related to the AVS, are you talking about heart failure? Dr. Whittacker said that could happen.”

Dr. Lemure fixed him with a serious look. “I don’t want to alarm you,” he began -- words that were guaranteed to alarm whomever they were being addressed to. “Given the edema, your excessive fatigue, the headaches, the shortness of breath, and your low ejection fraction, your heart is struggling to circulate blood adequately, and your blood isn’t oxygenated as well as it should be either. That’s why you’re tiring so easily.” 

“So it is heart failure.”

“It’s the beginning stages. That’s why it’s so important that we repair your valve soon and get things working properly again. Fortunately, if we address this quickly, you’re unlikely to have any permanent damage.”

Ted took a moment to absorb this. It wasn’t unexpected, exactly, but the confirmation was distressing. “Did I do something wrong? It seems like it came on so suddenly.” 

“That’s the way it tends to go with a degenerative condition like yours. You’re treading water just fine until the undertow sucks you under. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Dr. Lemure pulled up a chair next to the exam table and sat down. “You can put your shirt back on. I’ve seen all I need to see, and I think we’re ready to go.”

Ted obediently buttoned up his shirt, a little surprised. He’d expected another round of tests. “Is that safe? I mean, with all of the side effects, is it still safe to go ahead with everything?”

“Everything looks as stable as can be expected, so it needs to be done now,” Dr. Lemure said, not unkindly. “I’m going to go ahead and sign off on the operation. How does July 24th sound?”

“That’s less than two weeks away,” Ted said hesitantly. 

“Yes. With the rapid onset symptoms you’ve been experiencing, I think it’s wise to get this done as soon as possible. Before you leave, Julie will give you an informational packet and several waivers and medical release forms for you to fill out at home. In a moment here, I’m going to walk through the operation with you, and I want you to feel free to ask questions, but before I do, there’s one more thing: you strike me as a worrier, Ted.”

“Whatever gave you that impression?”

Dr. Lemure chortled, clapping a broad hand to Ted’s shoulder. “Worrywarts recognize our own. My kids are always getting after me about it. I’ll be upfront with you -- the paperwork is going to include a lot of information that may seem intimidating. We like to provide patients with a full and honest picture of what they can reasonably expect, and that includes an analysis of the risks involved. I don’t want you to get preoccupied with the statistics, okay?”

“That bad, huh?” 

“Speaking as a surgeon? Not at all. Valve replacement is a common procedure, and I’ve done successful surgeries that were two hundred times riskier. The surgery is the easy part. But speaking as someone who’s been a patient before? It’s going to seem like a lot. It’s normal to feel afraid, but I do want to reassure you that this risk is necessary.

“If all goes well in surgery, your prognosis should be good. You’re young, you’ve had success in changing your lifestyle, and you’re otherwise healthy. This isn’t a miracle fix, and there will be some things that you’ll have to manage for the rest of your life -- you’ll need to continue with your medication, watch your cholesterol and sodium intake, and keep a close eye on your blood pressure -- but I don’t see any reason to expect a poor outcome. Patients who have had this procedure generally experience a good quality of life.” Dr. Lemure smiled, giving Ted’s shoulder a squeeze. “I think you’ll be just fine.”

Ted went home in a contemplative mood, feeling oddly calm, like something had settled into place. He fixed himself a simple lunch and ate standing at the counter. He washed the dishes. He read carefully through the papers Dr. Lemure had given him, took a hot bath, and then went downstairs for the first time in two weeks. 

The workshop wasn’t the homiest place, but it was where he was most comfortable; he felt safer here, somehow, surrounded by his tools and machines. It smelled like oil, metal, and the wax he used on the Bug’s exterior. There was sawdust on the floor and books and papers everywhere, half-finished notes scribbled on schematics and on the backs of receipts. His mechanic’s jumpsuit hung over the back of his desk chair, a welding mask propped on top of his work-lamp. His spare goggles were on the chair, almost wedged into the seat cushion. Ted pulled them out. There were visible fingerprints smeared across the yellow lenses, a streak of grease across the nose bridge. 

Ted found a mostly-clean rag and sat down. He took his time polishing the lenses, thinking about the liability forms he’d just signed. 

The mortality rate was actually quite low, but there was always a chance that things could go south. With his family history, the physical toll of his previous career, and his prior heart attacks, the risks increased. They could open up his chest and find that things were worse than they expected. They could have a problem implanting the valve. He could go into cardiac arrest on the table. Even if the surgery progressed exactly as planned, there was a possibility of the implant failing or developing a massive infection that could go septic and kill him.

There was no gadget or gizmo that he could invent that would help, no Justice League to swoop in and save the day at the eleventh hour. His life was in the hands of Dr. Lemure and his team, and Ted would have no control over what happened once he was wheeled into the operating theater. 

He looked over at his photos, lined up in their haphazard row on his workbench. Mom and Dan both smiled at him, Jaime laughed with Paco, Mel showed off her diploma proudly. Booster looked unbearably young, his arms thrown over Ted’s shoulders as they mugged outrageously. There was Booster again, posing with Fire and Ice, flashing his teeth and looking every inch the showman he was. And there -- there was Booster, talking to Skeets, unaware of the camera, casual and relaxed and entirely himself in a way that few people got to see. 

Ted picked up the last photo, running his thumb over the curve of Booster’s smile. Was this really how he wanted to do this? Did he want to go under the knife knowing that he’d left things unresolved? Was he prepared to face the possibility of death without having made peace with everyone he loved? 

Hell, no.

***

With Larva’s increased capacity for speed, the trip from Chicago to DC took less than two hours. Once he was clear of any flight paths from the nearest airport, Ted switched on the airship’s stealth mode -- electromagnetic frequencies distorting and filtering out the spectrum of light waves in such a way as to cloak her from sight -- and descended into the city. 

Ted navigated Larva through a few tight streets before finding Booster’s apartment complex. He alighted carefully on the high roof of a parking garage a few blocks over, settling the ship partially behind a generator. The cloaking technology wasn’t flawless. Someone would be able to see where the light bent around the craft if they came within a dozen feet of it, but the security scanners would only allow someone with Ted’s fingerprints to turn on the engine anyway, so he didn’t feel too nervous about leaving it. 

It was, frankly, probably safer than his car would have been. Booster’s apartment was a dump, in a neighborhood that tipped over the line into sketchy. Still, the rent was dirt-cheap, and Booster had refused assistance to get a better place; he generally had no qualms about taking Ted’s money -- or anyone else’s, really -- but his pride surfaced at the oddest times, and he’d turned Ted down flat. 

Booster worked hard to keep the place clean, using tricks that he’d probably learned growing up. He’d done what he could to fix it up too, painting the walls and hiding the cracks in the drywall with poster-sized prints of his own ad campaigns. (Bea had called it hilariously tacky, but Ted privately thought that if he looked as good as Booster did in his underwear, he’d probably do the same thing.) Booster always seemed mildly embarrassed to have Ted over, and while Ted was too much of a city boy to get squeamish over mice and roaches, it seemed easier to circumvent the awkwardness altogether by hanging out at the house. Truthfully, Ted preferred having him stay over, because then it meant Booster wasn’t sleeping in a shithole with leaky pipes, drafty windows, and no security to speak of.

Still, Booster would just have to deal with a visit today. Larva’s scanners had confirmed that there was one human male matching his description inside his apartment, so Ted was coming in whether he liked it or not. 

Not trusting the rickety elevator, Ted took the stairs to the third floor; he’d learned by now to pace himself, so even though it took an embarrassingly long time to reach the landing, at least he wasn’t wheezing when he got there. The gold paint was barely clinging to the 308 plate nailed to Booster’s door; as he knocked, a few flakes fell onto the hall carpet. They’d probably stay there until the complex was demolished. 

“Michael? Hey, Mikey!” He knocked again, rattling the doorknob. It was locked. “It’s Ted. Can you let me in?” 

No one answered. Ted pressed his ear to the door, not hearing any sounds beyond it, and bent to examine the keyhole. Geez, even the lock was original to the building – it was a simple spring-mechanism, and he knew he could pick it in seconds. 

Before he could dig out his wallet for a bobby pin, a chain rattled and the door cracked open, a thin gold pincer grasping the doorframe. 

“Hi, Skeets,” Ted said. 

Skeets scanned him, as he always did, and beeped once he’d verified that Ted was himself, and not in fact an evil clone or a debt collector in a very clever disguise. “Hello, sir. If I were programmed to experience the human emotion called relief, I would be relieved to see you.” 

Ted frowned. “Is Booster alright?” 

“He is in a less than optimal state, although I would not classify him as being in any particular danger.” Skeets motored backwards, allowing Ted to push open the door and come inside. 

The apartment was so dark that Ted almost wished he’d brought his goggles. All the curtains were drawn, and the only light came from the open microwave, a forgotten mug sitting inside it. Skeets led him over to the living room couch, which contained a lump of Booster-shaped blankets with a mop of blond hair sticking out one end. The coffee table was littered with empties, a congealed bowl of what looked like mac and cheese, and a pile of used tea bags. The room smelled like beer and existential despair. 

Ted walked over and threw open the curtains. 

There was a piteous groan from the couch. Ted turned around to see Booster’s face emerge from his velour cocoon, his whole body flinching back from the light like a vampire. He screwed his eyes shut, shuddering, and yeah, that was absolutely the look of a man who was regretting his overindulgence. Ted returned to the couch. 

“Wh’zz?” 

“This is your afternoon wake-up call. You’re hungover, and there’s ice cream melted into your carpet. You look like me after I’ve been dumped." Ted tried to excavate him from the blankets, but Booster had gotten himself twisted up in them and was lying there like a bump on a log, utterly unhelpful. 

“’S frozen yogurt,” Booster mumbled. 

“Tomato, tomahto.” 

Booster squinted, his eyes completely bloodshot, and then finally appeared to notice him. His face crumpled. “Ted?” 

“That’s my name,” Ted agreed. 

Booster swallowed with visible difficulty, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I . . . I don’t feel good.” 

“I bet you don’t,” Ted said sympathetically. Booster really did look like hell -- stubbly, gym-sock-scented hell. “Come on, buddy, sit up. Help me unwrap this Boosterrito.” 

Between the two of them, they managed to extract him from his comfy carapace, and just in time. Skeets had had the foresight to collect a mixing bowl from the kitchen, and Booster spent a few minutes heaving into it. While they were occupied with that, Ted went in search of a glass of water, a hand towel, and some pain relief. The first two were easy enough to find, but the bottle of Advil was tucked away, bizarrely, in Booster’s underwear drawer. Ted brought his haul back to the living room. 

Booster looked marginally less like someone who’d just gotten off a Tilt-A-Whirl, so Ted tipped a few pills into his palm. “Take these.” 

Booster sucked down the Advil and most of the water, and Ted folded the wet towel and laid it against the back of his friend’s neck. “There we are.” He stood up, patting his pockets to make sure that he still had his wallet. “Skeets, keep an eye on him, would you?” 

“Please don’t go,” Booster begged. 

Ted ruffled his friend’s hair; it was greasy enough that it probably hadn’t been washed in a few days, and his pity was rapidly turning into genuine concern. “I’m coming back. I’ll be right back, okay?” 

Ted left him under Skeets’s supervision and wandered the neighborhood until he found a diner that offered all-day breakfast. When he returned to the apartment, he was carrying a container overflowing with scrambled eggs, sausage links, buttered toast, and diced fruit of a dubious quality, along with a hot black coffee that the waitress had sworn was capable of waking the dead. 

“Lucy, I’m hoooome,” he singsonged, kicking the door shut behind him. Booster was right where he’d left him, but he’d gotten himself into the shower at some point, because his hair was wet and he was wearing clean sweatpants. Ted set his offering on the table, and Skeets brought over some silverware. 

While Booster made a start on the food, Ted puttered around the living room, collecting the empty cans and tidying up. He cracked open the windows to let out the stale air and put the blankets in the laundry basket. Booster ate ravenously, pausing several times to lean over the trash can, like he wasn’t sure if his breakfast was going to make a return trip. It didn’t, thankfully, and he mopped up the last of the eggs and finished the coffee before sitting back with a deep sigh. Most of the color was back in his cheeks, and he looked vastly more awake and aware. 

“Thanks.” Booster sounded like he was gargling rocks. “Sorry.” 

Ted tied up the trash bag and set it aside for the recycling bin. “And what are you sorry for?” he prompted, knowing that he sounded insufferable but being just petty enough not to care.

“For almost killing you.”

Ted blinked. “Um. I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Sorry for stealing your mail and cancelling your important doctor’s appointment.’” 

“That too.”

“What? It was a heart attack,” Ted scoffed. “It had nothing to do with you.” 

“Yes, it did!” Booster exploded. “I made you come in for that fight! You didn’t want to come, but I kept at you until you did. Then you almost got killed, and now your heart’s giving out. You were doing fine before. You looked fine, you were healthy. But I pushed -- I always push -- and I didn’t take your condition seriously, and now you need surgery, and if you die _it’s my fault!_ ”

Ted stood there, stunned speechless. Booster shivered wretchedly, burying his hands in his hair as he visibly struggled not to cry.

“Oh. Boost, _hey_. Look at me, buddy. Michael.”

Booster shook his head, covering his eyes like a little kid. 

Ted sat down on the coffee table in front of him. “Listen to me, Carter,” he said emphatically, trying to tug Booster’s hands away from his face. “Listen: you didn’t cause this. Are you listening? If I hadn’t had a heart attack that day, I would have had one when Mel made me do staff evaluations or when I lifted something too heavy or I climbed too many stairs. I’m not saying that fighting an android helped, but it didn’t make this happen. It’s a degenerative heart defect. It was never going to get better on its own.” 

Booster still wouldn’t look at him, and Ted tightened his grasp on his wrists. Booster’s shoulders were starting to shake. “Boost, it’s not like that at all. If I’d had any idea ---- c’mon, man, talk to me.” 

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he choked, all in a rush. “It’s _all_ I can think about. Your operation’s delayed because of what I did, and what if you die before you can get your new valve? You’ve been so sick lately. It’s terrifying, and I just --- please don’t. Don’t leave me like that, please. I don’t know what I’d do. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Teddy, I swear. I’d never hurt you on purpose.” Booster was really crying now, and Ted couldn’t have kept his distance if he’d tried. 

Booster went eagerly into his arms, squeezing as close as he could get without sitting in Ted’s lap, and sobbed into his neck. Ted wasn’t much of a crier, but his eyes burned; he tucked his cheek against Booster’s wet hair. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I didn’t realize.” 

Booster hitched out another sob. Ted held him for a while, rubbing his back in steady strokes, and let the knot of tension in his own stomach release. Things were never quite right when they were on bad terms; it happened so rarely that he’d half-forgotten how awful it felt. Gradually, Booster calmed down, and when he started fidgeting, Ted let him go and shuffled back to give him a little space. 

Booster hiccupped, which made them both snicker, and Ted handed him the towel so he could wipe off his face. 

“Sorry,” Booster said again, but this time Ted knew he wasn’t apologizing for the cancellation. 

“It’s okay. We’ve both had a difficult month. And honestly, considering how many cans I put in that bag, you’re probably still a little drunk. Let me make some coffee, and we’ll talk.”

Ted dug through Booster’s cupboards for coffee grounds and made a fresh pot, microwaving a cup of decaf for himself. They drank their coffee in companionable silence, watching Skeets attempt to shampoo the yogurt stain out of the carpet. 

Booster abruptly set his cup down on the table with a clink. “I’m scared,” he admitted.

“I am too.”

“You don’t seem like it.” 

Ted huffed out a soft chuckle. “I”ll admit, I’ve been making light of this a lot. More than I probably should have. You know me -- I never know when to let a joke go. But I can promise that I’m not leaving without a fight. When have you ever known me to have enough dignity to go somewhere I don’t want to go quietly?”

Booster’s lips quirked up. “Never.”

“Exactly.” He took another gulp of coffee, settling into a more comfortable position. “You do know the heart attack wasn’t your fault, right?”

“I know,” Booster said. “Logically, I know, I just. . . . It felt like it was. It felt like it was Michelle all over again.”

Ted rubbed Booster’s arm, fine blond hairs scratching against his palm. Michelle’s death was still fresh in his friend’s mind, even twenty years after the fact. Moving past the loss of a sibling, let alone a twin, was a gargantuan task, and it didn’t take much to reopen that wound. Ted was the closest thing Booster had to family in this century -- of course he’d make a connection between what had happened to Michelle and what was happening to Ted. And Mrs. Carter had been sick too . . . . with heart problems. Ted felt the sudden urge to kick himself. He’d been so wrapped up in his own struggles that he hadn’t given a thought to those similarities. To Booster, it must have seemed like history was repeating itself. 

“I really messed up, with the appointment,” Booster continued. “It was so stupid. I didn’t know how to help. I thought maybe I was supposed to do something, change the outcome. I kept thinking, what if I was meant to come back to this time to save you?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in destiny, Mr. Atheist.”

Booster rolled his eyes. They were still red and swollen, and it made his irises look electric blue. “I don’t know, I’m not a Time Master. I’ve only met one. But I know that history can be changed, sometimes. What if the surgery went wrong, or Fleeter actually did kill you? Maybe that’s what I was here for: to save your life.” He picked at a loose thread on his sweatpants. “I guess that’s kind of egotistical. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, but I did.” 

“It’s all forgiven,” Ted assured him. “And things turned out fine. I saw Dr. Lemure this morning. The operation will be in twelve days, on the 24th. It wasn’t delayed by that much after all. This is a good thing, Boost. It’ll buy me more time.”

Booster wiped his arm across his eyes and leaned over, resting his head on Ted’s shoulder with a gusty sigh. “I’m so sorry.”

“You committing mail fraud isn’t the worst thing either one of us has ever done,” Ted said, smiling. 

Booster chuckled weakly. “I guess not.” 

“And hey, I owe you an apology too. I said some things that were uncalled for.” 

“They were true,” Booster said, sounding tired. 

“I’m still sorry. I know that your intentions were good.” 

“Yeah, and they were good when I lost my cool and beat the crap out of Fleeter and got myself booted off the team. I didn’t intend to hurt him, you know? I just wanted to scare him off, keep him away from you. I try to do something right and I make it worse, the way I always do. I don’t know why I even bother anymore.”

“Because you’re an incurable optimist?”

“Or just dumb,” Booster muttered. “Things are so different here. Heart diseases are a breeze to fix in my time. If you have the money, they can get you a new one, no problem. You know what I did for Mom, when it was her heart.”

“Yeah,” Ted said, cautious.

“I could get the money now.” Booster heaved a breath that ruffled Ted’s hair. “I have resources in this time. Legal ones. I could take you there, get you fixed up, and I wouldn’t have to cheat anyone to do it. I could do right by you, like I couldn’t by her.” He shook his head minutely, his forehead brushing against Ted’s ear. “I keep thinking that I can make things square, but I can’t, can I? It’s just something I have to live with forever.”

“I wish you’d forgive yourself.”

Booster didn’t have anything to say to that. Ted let it drop. After a few minutes, Booster got up to refill their mugs, and when he came back, there was a determined jut to his chin. “I’m going to take care of you,” he announced, putting Ted’s decaf on the table in front of him. “I’ll stay with you after the surgery and help. I can cook, clean, change your dressings, whatever. You can focus on healing, and I’ll take care of everything else, I promise. You won’t have to worry about anything.”

“From the look on your face, I’m thinking I’d better not argue.”

“Good,” Booster said. He tucked his long legs up on the couch and settled against Ted’s shoulder again, butting his head into Ted’s collarbone insistently until Ted slung an arm around him. “Are you really okay with all this? I don’t know how you can be.” 

“Well, with the wisdom of my venerable age----” Ted began.

“You’re only four years older than me.”

“Shut your yap, I’m imparting wisdom here.” Ted poked a finger in Booster’s ear, chuckling when he squawked. “There’s a philosophy of Dan’s that I’ve always tried to live by. I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is that there are forces in this universe that are beyond our ability to control, but we do what we can with the tools that we have. If I don’t have this operation, I’m going to die, and it’ll likely be sooner rather than later. If I have this operation, I’m still going to die -- hopefully in my nineties, in bed. I have a choice about whether to act now, but the ultimate outcome is inevitable. Life is finite. This is no different than facing down Despero or taking a public bus in Chicago. It’s a one-way street, so I may as well put a foot to the pedal and see how far it gets me.” 

Booster was still for a very long time; if not for the unsteady hitch of his breathing against Ted’s chest, Ted might have thought he’d fallen asleep. “Beetle?” 

“Yeah?”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” 

“Ditto,” said Ted softly. 

“Meeting you was the best part of coming to this century. That being said, it’s not too late to change your mind. I can order up one hot and fresh Time Sphere to go.”

“I really should have realized how serious this was when you offered to voluntarily be in the same room as Rip Hunter.”

Booster craned his neck to meet Ted’s eyes; he didn’t look happy, exactly, but there was something crushingly sincere about the way he said, “You know I’d do anything.”

“I know you would,” Ted replied, his voice gone thick. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but this is something that has to be done the old-fashioned way.” 

Booster just nodded. They sat there quietly, letting the coffee go cold.

***

On Saturday, Ted took Larva out for a quick jaunt to El Paso. After swinging by Berto’s garage for permission, he picked up Jaime from the basketball court and treated him to lunch. 

As they waited for their food, Jaime gave him the dirt on Brenda’s planned campaign for Student Council Treasurer and spent ten minutes eagerly extolling the virtues of a new garage band he liked. Having been previously subjected to the style of music that Jaime preferred -- and having been informed that this particular subgenre was called ‘screamo’ -- Ted declined the opportunity to listen to a sample. 

“You say it’s great, I’ll take your word for it,” Ted assured him. “If I wanted to listen to people shouting and throwing furniture, I’d attend one of my shareholder meetings.” 

“So what kind of music do you like? Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Band?” Jaime grinned at him from across the table. He’d gotten his hair cut in a more modern style, and his scraggly attempt at a soul patch was developing into an actual goatee. There was a new bounce to his stride, the kind of confidence that only came from realizing that you had options and an open world to explore, and there was something more measured, though no less kind, about the way he looked at people. Ted could claim absolutely zero credit for the way the kid was turning out, but darn it, he still felt a swell of pride. A few more years, and Jaime would be running with the best of them. 

“That actually hurt a little,” Ted said absently, still cataloging the changes in his protégé. “Wait, how do you even know about Lawrence Welk?”

“Abuelita liked to watch reruns when she babysat.”

“You know what? I’m taking the high ground here. Your grandmother is a woman of supreme taste, and I would happily watch _The Lawrence Welk Show_ with her. There, now don’t you feel ashamed of yourself?”

Their waitress appeared, looking harried, and thrust her tray down between them with a clatter. “Okay, here’s one for you, sweetheart,” she said, dropping a plate in front of Jaime. “And here’s one for your dad.” 

Ted choked on his drink. 

“Um, he’s not my dad,” Jaime said, sounding horrified by the idea.

Ted waited until the waitress had left before he leaned across the table and hissed, “Can you believe that? I’m not old enough to be your dad.” 

Jaime squinted at him. 

“Crap. I _am_ old enough to be your dad.”

After mutually agreeing never to bring up that unfortunate interaction again, they tucked into their lunches. Ted drizzled lemon juice over his steamed salmon pilaf, staring enviously at Jaime’s double-stacked burger and fries. 

“You want some?” Jaime offered. He dipped a handful of grease-soaked fries into his chocolate milkshake and swallowed the whole wad in about two bites. Ah, to be young again. 

“No thanks,” Ted sighed. At least the pilaf was good, if heavy-handed with the cilantro. “Listen, I wanted to tell you that I’ll be partially unavailable for the next few months. I know you’ve got your own tech support now anyway, but if you really run into trouble, you can call Booster or Fire for back-up. And if that’s not enough, then it would be League business.” 

“Business trip?”

“No, although I would love to claim business expenses on my medical bills. I’m getting a procedure done on my heart.” 

Jaime straightened up from his slouch, frowning. “You’re having surgery?” 

“Nothing major,” Ted lied. “The yoga and Cheerios aren’t cutting it, so we’re trying something else. It’s a routine operation, no big deal.”

“Cool,” he said, sounding relieved. “Can I do anything to help?”

“I appreciate the offer, but you just focus on your homework and keeping El Paso villain-free. Speaking of which, how’d things shake out with the chupacabra?”

“I didn’t tell you?” Jaime sputtered out a few crumbs of burger, his face brightening with excitement. “Oh, man, it’s a crazy story! For starters, his name is Thad.” 

“What, seriously? Okay. How’d things shake out with Thad?” 

The story was, indeed, crazy, and Jaime enthusiastically unspooled the whole saga as they finished their meal. Ted’s favorite part was the bit where Thad the Not-Chupacabra masterminded a daring escape from the Watchtower’s laboratory and tricked Green Lantern into locking himself in the specimen freezer. 

“Hal Jordan is a few peas short of a casserole, and I mean that in the nicest way possible,” Ted said. “The fact that Thad got Hawkgirl in there too is the thing that impresses me.” 

“I mean, I can’t blame Thad,” Jaime said. “He thought they were trying to carve him up for experiments. But it all got straightened out, and the League’s going to make sure he gets back to his planet. Naomi was a little mad at me for capturing him in the first place, but it turned out for the best. He didn’t have a way to get home before, and now he does.” 

“So, Naomi. How’s she doing?” Ted waggled his eyebrows. 

He’d expected a laugh, or maybe a disgusted look, but Jaime shrugged, stirring the remains of his milkshake. 

Ted eyed him. “Is everything okay?”

“I think so. She’s decided that she’s going to college in Boston next year. Don’t get me wrong, Ted -- I think it’s really great, and I’m so proud of her, but. . . .”

“But it’s a long way away,” Ted said knowingly. 

Jaime fiddled with the straw; with that half-frustrated, uncertain look on his face, he suddenly seemed much younger again, despite the beard and the stylish haircut. “We haven’t talked about it. I guess that’s what’s bothering me. What if she says she doesn’t want a long-distance relationship?”

Ted reached for his glass. “Mmm. I know how that goes. Just ask her. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but at least you’ll have your answer. Otherwise you’re going to stew over it until you end up resenting her for it, and then you’ll probably have a vicious fight and never talk to each other again. At least if you’re up front about it with each other, you might be able to stay friends.” 

Jaime stared at his milkshake for a moment before picking it up to finish the last dregs. “That kind of sounds like what my mom said.” 

“Your mom’s a very smart woman. And so I am. Well, I’m not a woman, but you get me.” 

“I don’t know,” Jaime hedged. “I feel like if I bring this up, I’ll just be kicking a beehive. What if she hasn’t even considered breaking up with me, and me pointing it out makes her think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good idea’? Maybe it’s better not to make a fuss.”

“It might be easier, but it’s not better.” 

“Are you sure about that?”

“Take it from someone who’s been on both sides of the equation,” Ted said, hoping he didn’t sound too embittered. “Tell her the truth.” 

“I hope you’re right,” Jaime said.

“Of course I am. My brilliant young protégé, my insect child, have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Kinda?”

“That’s fair. But nothing ventured is nothing gained, and you should listen to your mother. While I’m dispensing unsolicited advice, I’ve got another pearl for you: Don’t give Booster money, even if he says pretty please.”

Jaime froze with the straw halfway to his mouth, looking like he didn’t know if he was in trouble or not. Ted resisted a mighty urge to reach over and give him a noogie. “It wasn’t a big deal, Ted. He kind of seemed like he needed it.” 

“I’m sure he did. I’m sure he’ll need it the next time he asks you, because things are tight. Then a check doesn’t go through, and can’t you please spot him for gas for his car? Then his credit card is maxed out and he needs to pay rent. Then he forgot his wallet at his publicist’s office, and the restaurant bill has to be paid. And the next thing you know, you’re closing up your successful dental practice and driving back to your comfortable suburban home and walking in the door to greet your lovely spouse, only to find a sixty-year-old man named ‘Booster’ squatting in your basement. Is that what you want? Because that’s what you’re going to get.” 

“. . . . I won’t give him money.”

“Good man.” 

***

On Monday evening, Ted quietly sneaked into Kord Omniversal to verify one last time that his affairs were in order.

He already had a succession plan in place in the event of his untimely demise: Mel would be CEO, of course, with Minion Gene as her VP, and she was under strict orders to do whatever she had to do to sweeten the pot enough to convince Murray to stay on as Head of R&D. The industry shares and roughly one half of Ted’s personal fortune would funnel directly back into the company, with several sums earmarked to fund specific pet projects that Ted had hoped to work on himself. The Kord family home in Chicago would go to the children of Jeremiah Duncan, Ted’s father’s oldest friend, while the house in Highland Park was Booster’s. All other assets would be sold, with their proceeds to be divvied among a list of Ted’s usual charities. 

Another quarter of his savings was to be split between the Justice League’s coffers, to be used as they chose, and scholarships for Ted’s alma mater. The remaining quarter had required more thought (and paperwork), but the legal department had helped him get it all arranged with their usual terrifying efficiency. 

At first he’d waffled over a gift for Jaime. He had a lot of respect for Jaime’s parents, and he didn’t want to offend anyone’s pride or overstep, but what was the point of having a rich eccentric mentor if you didn’t inherit a fat stack after they croaked? Figuring that if he did ruffle some feathers, it wouldn’t matter because he’d be dead and it therefore wouldn’t be his problem, Ted had set up an interest-accruing account with plenty of funds to get Jaime through dental school. There was enough to cover Milagro too, if her older brother was inclined to share. Additionally, the Bug would pass to the new Blue Beetle, though Ted -- after realizing that Bianca Reyes might not appreciate her teenage son owning a high-speed airship -- had added a provision that Jaime had to have a commercial driver’s license first.

Along with the house, the largest chunk was set aside for Booster. Ted didn’t bother with any stipulations or oversight, though his lawyer had argued vigorously in favor of both. Ted frankly didn’t care how or where Booster spent it. If he wanted to invest in a few portfolios and live sensibly off the dividends for the rest of his life, that was his prerogative. If he wanted to blow it all on new clothes and shiny cars and strippers in Vegas, that was fine too. All that mattered was that Booster would be comfortable, for however long the money lasted. What remained was divided into modest cash gifts for Ted’s friends and some former Leaguers -- except for Guy, who would receive a crisp five dollar bill and an inflatable sex doll. 

(Imagining his reaction, Ted had laughed so hard that Angie peeked into his office to find out what was so funny. He’d declined to tell her, since she’d never met Guy Gardner. She’d never had her ribs cracked by the pot-shotting cheater either. Not that Ted was still bitter.) 

It had been a relief to have things settled, as morbid as it sounded to divvy up the proceeds of his life’s work and put in requests for his own funeral arrangements. Having assured himself that every instruction had been signed and stamped, Ted found himself lingering, shuffling restlessly through his filing cabinets before ending up in front of the windows. The towering skyline stretched out in front of him, thousands of lights shrouded in late-night fog, and the sight of the city he loved calmed some of the itch beneath his skin. 

The shape of Chicago changed, but Chicago herself never did. She was always brash and loud, with the kind of zest for life that had an edge of danger to it. There was something reassuring about her immovability -- a weight and a history and the knowledge that the home her people had built would endure in some form long after those builders were gone.

Mel interrupted his navel-gazing with a tap on his open door. “You’re lucky I didn’t call Manny to escort you out of the building. What are you doing here?”

“Just checking on things.” 

Ted heard padded footsteps on the carpet, and then Mel was standing at his shoulder. He studied her -- the severe tidiness of her topknot, the sweep of her heavy eyebrows, her smattering of freckles -- and realized, rather stupidly, that she’d gotten older. He always looked at Mel and saw her as she had been when they’d first met in college; her confidence gave her a sort of ageless quality. In the harshly contrasting light, he noticed a flash of silver in her hair, the softness around her jaw, and the creases bracketing her mouth. 

They’d been business partners for nearly twenty years now. It was almost unthinkable. 

After his mom’s death, Mel had been the one constant in his life, the one person who shared his deep desire to create something remarkable, to do something _good_. She was fierce and principled and driven in a way that Ted could only envy. Mel, he knew, relied on him to plot the course while she steered. He provided the ideas, and she found ways to implement them; his whimsy and her pragmatism played off each other flawlessly. Oh, they’d had their hiccups, but from the very beginning Ted had never doubted that she would have his back when it counted most; he hoped she knew that he’d move mountains for her. 

Now here they were, two decades older and (arguably) wiser. Ted’s life had been a series of breathless, chaotic, beautiful adventures, and Mel was at the pinnacle of her career at a company she’d helped build. For a pair of starry-eyed kids from Chi-Town, they hadn’t done too badly for themselves. 

Ted braced his arm against the window, watching the slow crawl of traffic on the street below. “Do you remember the night after Dan died? You picked me up from the police station.” 

“Of course I remember.” 

“It was past midnight before they let me go, and you had to give your thesis defense early that morning, but you got in your shitty station wagon and drove across the city for me. Dan was dead, Jarvis was dead, Dad wasn’t picking up his phone. I was a mess. I cried the whole way back to campus. You took me home and made me grilled cheese and sat up with me all night. You defended your thesis on two hours of sleep. Do you remember? That was the night I realized how much I loved you, Melody Case. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

Mel was silent. The faint sound of voices and rolling carts started to emerge from down the hall as the custodial staff arrived for the overnight shift. “You don’t get to say goodbye to me, Ted,” she said at last. 

“Mel----”

“No. You want to talk about that night? That was the night that I found out you could die on me at any moment because Dan fucking Garrett made a kid who hero-worshipped him promise to risk his life for the sake of a stupid _legacy_. For years, every time you took off in the Bug, there was a little voice in the back of my head that said that this would be the time that you wouldn’t come back. I had to make peace with that, Ted. Eventually, I even accepted it. But I’m putting my foot down. You’re not going to let this be the thing that makes me say goodbye to you, do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ted reached back blindly, and her fingers curled around his. 

***

Three days before the surgery, Ted hosted an impromptu gathering of the old guard at the house in Highland Park. Almost all of the ex-Leaguers came; even J’onn took a break from his busy schedule of being mysterious to have dinner with them.

Ted prepared a massive shrimp paella with Bea as his sous chef, and Guy and Oberon brought copious amounts of booze. Booster, who had appointed himself _maître d′_ , was greeting the new arrivals and herding everyone into living room for pre-dinner drinks and appetizers. Booster was in his element at parties like this, schmoozing and flirting outrageously and making sure that everyone had someone to talk to and a drink in their hand; it was a relief to see him looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again. 

“You’re chirpy tonight,” Bea observed, stirring the massive pot of seasoned rice on the stove. 

“I guess I’ve missed this," Ted said. 

“Mmm. We don’t do this enough.” She sneaked a bite of the rice, made a face, and then reached up into Ted’s spice rack to grab the bottle of paprika before shaking a liberal amount into the pot. “It’s been too long since we’ve had a party.” 

Ted wracked his brains, trying to remember the last time all of them had been in one room together. Sure, little groups of them might go out for drinks once in a blue moon, but nobody seemed to have time for the kind of shindigs they used to throw in the Embassy days. “I think the last time was when Ralph and Sue invited us for Sherlie’s first birthday.” 

Bea clicked her tongue. “I still can’t believe Sue let him name their daughter ‘Sherlock’. What was she thinking?”

“It’s better than Ralphina.” 

“At least Ralphina is a girl’s name!” 

“I don’t think it’s technically a name at all,” Ted pointed out. “I am surprised he didn’t go for Nancy Drew Dibney, though. I mean, it was right there, and it doesn’t even sound half bad.” 

Booster poked his head into the kitchen. “Teddy, look who I found,” he sang, and Ted almost dropped the strainer into his sink when he saw who had her arm slung around his friend’s shoulder.

“Peej, you made it!” Ted wiped his hands on his jeans and hurried over to give Kara a hug. “Wow, it’s been ages! Look at you: you’re as gorgeous and terrifying as ever.” 

Kara boomed out a laugh, giving him an affectionate squeeze that he very much appreciated, given that his head only came up to her chest. “It’s great to see you, though I wish the circumstances had been better. How are you doing?”

“Fabulous, now that you’re here. What’s a party without beautiful women who could rip me in half? Did you bring Wonder Woman too?”

Bea rolled her eyes, but fortunately Kara just laughed again, holding him at arm’s length to look him over. “Incorrigible. You look good, Ted.” Her blue eyes narrowed a bit, evaluating. “Tired, though. You should be resting instead of throwing parties.” 

“But parties are more fun.”

“Ted,” Bea hissed suddenly. “Why the hell did you invite _G’nort?!_ ”

Ted peeked around the bulge of Peej’s bicep, and sure enough, there he was in the hall, hugging an alarmed-looking Booster. “Shit. I didn’t.” 

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Kara said, giving Ted’s back a reassuring pat that almost knocked him off his feet. “Between the lot of us, I think we can keep him from accidentally destroying your house.” She turned to leave and then paused long enough to note, “That paella smells amazing. Is it almost done?”

“Almost. Make sure he doesn’t touch anything. Or breathe,” Bea called after her. 

The paella turned out beautifully, and the group squeezed around Ted’s kitchen table to gorge themselves and talk loudly over each other, reminiscing about the good old days. Amazingly, nobody got an alert about an alien invasion. Nobody punched anyone else, even though Peej and Guy were forced to coexist in the same room. Nobody started a foodfight, or broke Ted’s house, or announced that they’d joined Amway. It was just a nice dinner. And, boy, did they laugh. Some of them were wiping away tears by the time they finished eating, and Ted’s stomach muscles actually hurt. 

He’d missed these people. Even G’nort.

Scott had baked rhubarb cobbler for dessert, and as the gracious host, Ted went into the kitchen to dish it up for everyone. Tora, eternally helpful, followed to give him an assist. They scooped and plated, and Ted grinned as he caught Tora adding decorative snowflakes onto the gobs of whipped topping. 

There was an explosion of laughter, and then Guy stuck his head around the corner. “Beetle, settle somethin’ for us. D’you think your doc can take care of everythin’ else what’s wrong with you? Or would they need a plastic surgeon for that?”

“I’ll ask if they have a two-for-one deal so you can finally get your face fixed,” Ted replied, to a chorus of _oooohs_ from the peanut gallery. Guy snorted, strutting over to steal one of the plates right out of Tora’s hands before swaggering back out of the kitchen.

“You know,” Ted said, “it’s been ten years, and I still don’t get what you see in him when he’s not concussed. At least he knows you’re not with him for his looks.”

“Ted!”

“Sorry, sorry! Not that I have any leg to stand on there.”

“Oh, stop it. You have such a sweet face.” Tora tapped her index finger to the crow’s feet that had settled into the corners of his eyes. “You look like someone who has a lot of love to give. Someone who laughs.” 

Ted’s throat abruptly felt tight, and he coughed to cover it. It was coming from Tora, who had long ago relinquished her claim to high standards, but that might have been one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to him. 

Someone (Booster) had started a slightly inebriated “COBBLER, COBBLER, COBBLER” chant, complete with table-banging, so Ted got a grip on his wibbly emotions and picked up the serving spoon again. “Pick up the pace, Ice Ice Baby. We’ve got ingrates to feed.”

As the group lingered over dessert and after-dinner coffee, the laughter ebbed and the conversation sobered. Talk turned to more serious topics: fractures among the leadership of the Lantern Corps, the political stand-off in Star City, a wave of violent burglaries in Ivy Town that Ralph had been investigating with no viable leads, rumors of contentious infighting in the current League. Inevitably, the conversation meandered over to the elephant in the room. 

Sue was the one to tackle it first. “Ted, you haven’t said how long you’ll be in the hospital. I was wondering if you needed a place to stay afterwards. Surely you shouldn’t be recuperating alone here.” 

Before Ted could answer, Booster piped up, “I’ve got it covered. Once he can go home, I’ll be playing nurse.”

“Oh, God,” Bea muttered. 

“Is your insurance covering everything?” Max had finished his plate and was unwrapping a wad of bubblegum; he and Claire were on their third attempt at being married to each other, on the condition that he stop smoking so much, but he still had a self-admitted oral fixation. “If it isn’t, we could make arrangements with the Justice Corps’s insurance provider.” 

“That’s very nice of you, Max. Too nice.” 

“It would come with a few very minor stipulations, of course.”

“Oh, thank God,” Ted said. “For a second there I thought you were an evil clone.” 

“Is it just one stent?” Sue was raking her fork through the whipped cream on her cobbler, and Ted suddenly remembered that she didn’t like rhubarb. He should have thought to buy another type of dessert for her. “I heard that it would be a double-bypass, but then someone else said it was just the one.” 

“Geez, I wish. No stents at all, actually. I have a heart valve defect, and that’s what’s been causing all the trouble. They’ll implant a mechanical valve.” 

“That’s not so bad,” Barda offered. Ted was about sixty percent sure that Barda didn’t know what an aortic valve was -- did they even _have_ surgery on Apokolips? -- but he appreciated the vote of confidence.

“It kind of is,” Ralph said, which Ted appreciated a lot less. 

Sue shot a look that could have curdled milk at her husband, who shriveled into himself. “Nowadays these things are routine, I’m sure. They probably do five of them a day. Will you need physical therapy afterwards? Have they set up any sort of long-term management plan to follow?”

“Don’t get fat again,” Guy advised. He kicked one foot against Max’s chair. “Or you’ll start lookin’ like Executive Doughboy.” 

Max looked like he very much wanted a cigar, if only so he could ash it on Guy’s head. It was probably a good thing, Ted thought, that Max didn’t have his mental manipulation powers any more. While it would have been entertaining to watch, he wasn’t really up for filing all the insurance claims that would follow that kind of beatdown on his own property.

“Golly, Guy, that’s not very nice!” cried G’nort.

“Not my fault everyone gettin’ old and ugly.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Kara said loudly, “Sue was asking about your post-op, Ted.”

“I’ll stay in the hospital for about five days and do physical therapy because of the whole sternum-breaking thing. They can do grown-tissue replacements now, but those have to be replaced every decade or so. The mechanical one should last until I croak. I have to take blood thinners for the rest of my life, though.”

“That’s better than heart failure,” Max pointed out reasonably.

Guy popped open another beer, aiming the cap at Ralph, who stretched out his arm to catch it. “Yeah, don’t be a little bitch, Beetle.”

J’onn was too dignified to roll his eyes, but he came close. “Ahem. I’m sure Guy means to say that you must have faith in the expertise of your physician. Whatever happens, you know you have our support.”

“I know.” Ted cast a fond glance around the table, at this ragtag bunch of misfits who had resolved to save the world and had gone through the wringer together to become. . . . well, an older bunch of misfits. He didn’t give a hoot about what the other heroes thought of their legacy. These people, this family, had been a part of the greatest joy in his life, and he was more grateful for that than he could express. 

“Everything will be fine,” Tora told him. She said it with such absolute confidence that it was hard to imagine that she could be wrong. 

It was past midnight by the time people started making their excuses, collecting their jackets and calling up taxis for a ride home. Ted’s guests toddled out in twos and threes, pleasantly drunk and cheerful. Peej, helping Sue prop up a sozzled Ralph with one hand and holding an unconscious G’nort over her shoulder with the other, made a date to catch up with Ted over coffee. Max and Oberon shook his hand. Tora gave him one of her lovely extra-warm, extra-soft hugs, which Ted had always found particularly comforting; Bea followed her up by groping his tush, which was less comforting. Guy quietly wished him luck. Scott and Barda kept their farewells restrained to a hug and an earth-shaking back-slap, respectively. J’onn left last, after giving Ted the kind of calm, sincere pep talk that they’d all come to expect from him, the kind that made Ted feel both validated and mildly uncomfortable, and then the house fell silent. Booster drifted to the fridge for another bottle of beer and disappeared into the living room, leaving Ted with the enormous mess in his kitchen. 

Feeling satisfied with himself and the world in general, Ted packaged up the remains of dinner and filled the dishwasher. He’d rinsed a decent stack of plates before it occurred to him that Booster was being uncharacteristically quiet. He couldn’t hear the television either. Had he left? Ted poked his head out of the kitchen, suds dripping into the carpet. 

Booster was sitting on the couch, looking pensive. Ted abandoned the dishes, wiping his soapy hands on his jeans as he walked into the living room.

“What's up, buttercup?”

“I’m not sure,” Booster said slowly. 

Ted eased down next to him, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “No, I know that face. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet. You want to talk about it?”

“That depends. Are we pretending that tonight wasn’t for you to say goodbye?”

 _Sometimes I wish you didn’t know me so well_. “I like to cover all my bases. Don’t take it as a prediction.” 

Booster nodded shortly, starting to pick at the label on the bottle. “Sure.”

Ted let himself sink into the cushions. He hadn’t had any alcohol, but the food, the company, and the late hour had him feeling a little tipsy himself. It had been a good night, a night to remember. He was a very lucky Beetle. 

“Two days,” Booster said, so quietly that Ted almost didn’t hear him. 

“Two days,” Ted agreed, and he felt Booster’s hand at his wrist, resting lightly against the pulse there. 

The nostalgia, the intimacy of dim lighting, and sharing an evening spent eating good food and laughing with old, dear friends -- it all coalesced into a sharp, melancholy sort of longing that settled heavily in Ted’s chest. It left him with all his defenses down, the feelings he was very careful never to take out and look at too closely clamoring to make themselves heard while he was most vulnerable to them. 

Booster’s expression was open and inviting, his glossy good looks softened into something approachable. He was still touching Ted’s wrist, his skin so warm. Sitting there on the couch, he looked unpolished and tired and at his most genuine. How easy it would be, Ted thought, to tug on his arm, draw him closer until they were sharing the same breath. For once, he let himself feel it -- the yearning for something he wanted and knew he couldn’t have, and the reckless impulse that told him to throw caution to the wind and try for it anyway. 

Ted kept his hands to himself, and the moment passed. 

***

The doors that separated the operating bays from the recovery wing loomed like the gates of hell, and they wheeled Ted’s bed right up to them before stopping. Ted told himself to breathe, but it wasn’t easy. He could feel his heart pounding so hard that he thought surely everyone could see it moving beneath the thin hospital gown. The plastic cap on his head crinkled as he did his best to relax against the mattress pad.

“Easy,” one of the nurses murmured to him. “It’s alright.”

He nodded sharply. 

“You can say goodbye here,” the other nurse told Booster and Mel, “but we’ll need to go in very soon to prep him.”

Mel bent to give him a hug, pressing their cheeks together. Her red hair spilled loosely over her shoulders, and Ted ran his fingers through it gently before tucking it back into place. She took a few deep breaths and then pulled away slowly, skimming her hands down his arms to grasp his fingers. She looked at him hard, her mouth held in a tight line. 

“You’ve got this,” she said firmly. “You’re going to be fine. If you’re not in the recovery room in six hours, there’ll be hell to pay.” She ducked to kiss his forehead, and he felt her lips tremble. “I love you.” 

“I’ll be there,” Ted promised her. “Love you too, Mel.” 

It was unexpectedly difficult to make himself let go of her, but then she was drawing back and a somber-looking Booster slid up to take her place. 

“Ready, Teddy?” he asked, pulling him carefully into a hug.

Ted managed a grin and squeezed him tight. It felt so familiar, the shape of Booster in his arms, and he silently committed it to memory. Despite the apprehension, the lost opportunities, and the way Booster's hands gripped him a little too hard, Ted could only find it in himself to be grateful. "As I'll ever be, buddy. See you on the other side." 

"See you there." Booster held his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his temple, then his cheeks, and then, after the briefest hesitation, his lips. At first, Ted just rolled with it. Emotions were running high. It was a vulnerable moment for both of them. Nothing wrong with a tender farewell between a pair of lifelong friends.

A second later, he thought, _Oh, wow, okay, that’s a tongue_. 

Before Ted could even begin to process that, he was whisked away into the too-bright operating room, and the world went pleasantly fuzzy around the edges.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Booster, you have the worst timing. 
> 
> One more chapter left to wrap things up! I've so enjoyed writing this story.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a quick warning for folks with emetophobia or anyone who dislikes descriptions of medical procedures like wound care. Also, take note of the rating bump-up.

* * *

_SIX_

* * *

* * *

Ted was floating on his back in Lake Michigan. The waves rose and broke around him, pushing at his naked body. The water was oddly warm, but his hands and feet were cold. He should have been afraid. He was a good swimmer, but the Great Lakes were as bottomless as a sea, and the Bug was out of reach, far below the surface in her hidden tunnel. 

The sun shone in his eyes, but the heat felt good on his face. The waves lapped at his ears, his jaw, at his knees, tugging at his ankles almost playfully. He was content. This was exactly where he was meant to be. 

A sudden swell splashed across his face, flooding his nose and mouth. The water had gone ice-cold, and his whole body seized in panic as a current pulled him under. He thrashed and fought, clawing at what sparse light penetrated the dark water, but he was dragged inexorably deeper. His lungs filled with water. He could hear voices, familiar voices, but no one else was there with him. He was alone, and he was drowning. 

But no, no. No, that wasn’t right. He was in a bed. Someone was holding his hand. People were talking, laughing quietly, touching him. There were wires on his chest. He’d -- he’d had surgery, hadn’t he? 

But no, he couldn’t have. He was in a lake. People didn’t get surgery in a lake. That was ridiculous.

He bobbed in and out of consciousness like the waves, woken a few times by gentle hands, or a hushed conversation, or the sound of his own whimpering. Time became a hazy cycle of agony followed by stuporous relief.

***

Someone was petting his head. It felt nice. 

Bea’s face swam slowly into focus, her hair so bright that it almost hurt to look at her. He tried to say something, but there was an anvil on his chest and his throat was sandpaper. 

“Hi, baby,” Bea said softly. Her warm hand kept stroking through his hair. It felt so nice. 

He didn’t know where he was, and there were too many lights. His skin felt stretched tight around a yawning nothingness; he was heavy but weighless. He couldn’t think around the fog that hovered behind his eyes. He was drugged. Someone had drugged him, poisoned him. 

“Shhh,” Bea murmured. Her fingers played with his bangs, smoothing them back from his forehead. She was strong and safe. He loved Bea. Bea would help him. “It’s okay, baby. He’s just stepped out for a minute. He’ll be right back. You just rest. That’s all you have to do, I promise.” 

He closed his eyes. 

***

When Ted finally woke up with his wits somewhat intact, he had no idea how long he’d been out. He’d been dreaming, or delirious. He’d also never felt so horrible in all of his life. Moving hurt. Breathing hurt. _Everything_ hurt. His vision swam at the edges, and when he turned his head, a wave of dizziness swept through him. He kept his eyes closed until it passed and then dared to take in the two figures next to him.

Booster was sleeping upright in a chair, his chin tucked against his chest. Tora was sitting with him, reading a book by the soft light of a lamp. She glanced up and saw him looking at her and immediately got up to go to him. 

“Tora,” Ted mumbled hoarsely. It took effort to talk, like his ribs had shrunk around his lungs. 

“Welcome back,” she whispered, stroking his arm. “You’re at St. Marcy’s. The surgery was yesterday, and everything went well. You’ve been in and out since then. You had a bad reaction to the hydrocodone, so they’re going to switch you over to something else. How are you feeling?”

“Mmm. Like someone, ah, cracked open my sternum.”

“The nurse is going to bring you something for the pain soon,” she said. “Hold on.” 

He breathed through his nose; breathing through his mouth made his chest hurt more. “Sure.” He didn’t want to sleep again, but he could feel consciousness slipping away from him, grain-by-grain.

When he woke up again, Booster was holding his hand, just watching him. 

“Hey, Blue,” he said. 

“Hi.” Ted blinked, taking in his surroundings for the first time. It was a nice, airy room, looking more like a hotel than a hospital; if it weren’t for the IV in his arm and the heart monitor, he might have thought it was one. It was morning. The curtains were open, and there were flowers on the table next to the bed. Bea’s jean jacket was tossed over one of the empty chairs, and Booster’s gym bag was sitting on the windowsill. 

Booster was still watching him. 

Ted lifted his heavy head from the pillow, unsure of where to even start and feeling suddenly so overwhelmed that he could cry. Everything ached so badly, and he couldn’t think, but this was so important – this was the _most_ important thing. . . . 

Booster squeezed Ted’s hand, his thumb lightly brushing over the bruised skin around the IV port. “Later,” he said firmly. “We’ll talk when you’re feeling better. Okay?” 

“Okay.” He sagged back into the mattress, catching his breath, and then managed to ask, “What’s new?” 

Booster smiled, as Ted hoped he would, and hunched over until he could rest his cheek on the bed rail. “I tried that new Thai bubble tea at Sundollar. It was pretty good. Bea bought a Twix from the vending machine but it got stuck and she almost set off the fire alarm. Someone left a condom on the sink in the men’s restroom. Super gross. Oh, and I got past Level 200 in Candy Crush.” 

“Congratulations,” Ted said groggily. “I’m so proud of you.” 

Booster squeezed his fingers again. “Your operation went really well. It took about three hours from start to finish, and they got the new valve in without any problems. You bled more than they expected, but you didn’t have to get a transfusion or anything. They took the catheter out a few hours ago. You’ll have to leave in the drainage tubes for a week. The leads have to stay too, okay? You were really insistent about taking them off earlier. I thought you and Jackie were going to get in a fistfight when she put her hand down your shirt to stick them back on.”

“I don’t remember,” Ted admitted, dimly mortified. “Who’s Jackie?”

Booster smirked. “Yeah, you were out of it. She’s one of your nurses. And don’t worry, you didn’t hurt her. I’d put my money on her anyway, if it came down to a fight.” 

“Not gonna fight anyone. Too tired.”

“I’ll bet. Just rest, Teddy. I’ll be right here to defend your honor.” 

For a long while, Ted drifted, caught somewhere in the liminal space between consciousness and sleep. Everything felt half-real, like reality could just as easily be a dream, until that bubble was popped by sporadic flashes of pain, excruciating enough to yank him solidly back into his own body. 

When he surfaced again, dry-mouthed and somehow more tired than he’d been earlier, the light in the room had changed. It was still daytime, but the curtains had been pulled shut, and Booster was gone. Bea sat in his chair, flipping through a fashion magazine and chewing noisily. He watched, oddly spellbound, as she blew a pink bubble between her lips. 

She turned another page and then glanced up at him. Popping the bubble, she tucked the gum into her cheek and gave him a wink. 

“Is it tomorrow?” Ted asked her, trying to guess how much time he’d lost. 

“It’s still today,” Bea told him. “Booster went to the little boys’ room.” 

Ted cataloged himself. It was like his brain knew he was still in pain, but his nerves couldn’t feel it. Everything, including his brain, was slightly numb. It was bizarre. “I feel weird.” 

“Jackie came in about ten minutes ago and gave you a different painkiller,” Bea said. “You were pretty miserable, so they tried something stronger. She said you must have built up a tolerance. That’s what you get for flinging yourself around on a skywire.” 

“Hmmph.” 

Booster came back then, making a beeline for Ted’s bed. “Everything okay?” 

“I think I can be trusted to watch him for five minutes,” Bea said, snapping her gum irritably. “Pull your g-string out of your crack, tightass.” 

Booster shot her a nasty look. 

“Please don’t,” Ted mumbled. “This is a good Christian hospital.” 

Bea picked up her magazine pointedly. Booster ignored her right back, squatting down to plug his phone into an outlet under the window. “They changed your dressings,” he told Ted. “Are they feeling alright? Not too tight?”

It hadn’t even occurred to Ted to look at his chest; the pain was centered there, and he’d had an instinctive aversion to touching it for fear of causing more pain. Now he was struck by a hazy curiosity. From his pre-op research, he knew there should be an incision down the center of his breastbone, held together by stitches, and at least one drainage port to remove any fluid and pus. Inside, his bisected rib cage would be bound together with surgical wire until the bone grew back together. And even deeper inside, there would be a small mechanical valve, attached to the living muscle of his heart. He could feel the bandages around his chest, the rough texture of gauze and medical tape. He tugged at the neck of his hospital gown, wanting to see. 

It took a minute to get the leads out of the way without yanking them off, but he looked and then did a double-take. “Booster!” he wailed.

Booster stood up so fast he almost brained himself on the windowsill. “Huh? What’s wrong?”

“They stole it,” Ted moaned, staring mournfully at the expanse of bald skin. “My handsome, handsome chest hair . . . . Guys, it’s all _gone_.” 

Booster and Bea laughed, which Ted thought was extremely insensitive of them. 

“Sorry,” Bea snickered. “They had to shave it for the incision. It’ll come back. Wait a few months and you’ll have grown yourself enough chest hair for five manly men.” 

Ted pulled the fabric up to his chin to hide his hairless shame. 

The curtain rustled again, and a short young woman in purple nurses’ scrubs came inside, holding a tablet. Ted watched her warily, hoping that this wasn’t the Jackie that he’d tried to wrestle. 

“Hi, Ted. I’m Habi. I’ve been looking after you, but you may not remember me.” She rolled his IV stand away from the monitors so she could pull a blood pressure cuff from its hook.

“Sorry,” Ted said awkwardly. 

“No, it’s fine,” she said. She had a pretty smile, and there was a teeny gap between her two front teeth. “The first 48 hours can be rough, but you’re doing really well. I’m just going to take your blood pressure quick. Jackie gave you more medication to help manage your pain. How are you feeling now?” 

“He’s kind of loopy,” Booster told the nurse. “Is that normal?”

“I am not!” Ted said indignantly. Why was Booster telling lies about him to Habi? “I am unloopy, thank you.” 

“It’s normal,” Habi said. 

Bea was hiding a grin behind her hand, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Ted ignored them both, offering Habi his arm so she could slip the cuff on. Everyone was quiet while the machine took its reading, and Habi seemed pleased with whatever the result was. “You’re staying in a good range. I think it’s about time to get a little food in you, but I’d like you to try sitting up first. What do you think?”

The thought of eating was about as appealing as doing a somersault; he mostly wanted to sleep some more. Everyone was looking at him expectantly, so he nodded. 

“Can I help?” Booster asked. 

“Thanks, but I’d like to see how Ted manages. Here’s how we’re going to do this, Ted. I’m going to brace my hands against your back, and I’ll be pushing my foot against the bed pedal to raise the angle while you slowly sit up. Focus on using the muscles in your hips and thighs to push yourself up, rather than your back. If you start to feel any sharp pains, I want you to stop and tell me, okay?” 

It took a lot more effort than it should have, but somehow Ted found himself upright, sweat prickling on his forehead and breath hitching uncomfortably. Habi grabbed a pillow from the end of the bed and encouraged him to wrap his arms around it. “Hold it close to your chest and use it to brace your ribs while you breathe,” she said. “Slow and steady. There we go.”

Having something to lean against did help.

“Anyone who’s had broken ribs learns really quickly that a pillow is their best friend. Hold it just like this when you feel like you have to cough or sneeze. Works like a charm.” Habi gave Ted’s dressings a quick check and switched out his IV drip before declaring him ready for sustenance. “Jackie will bring something in for you in about half an hour, alright? If you feel like you need to lie down again, press the call button.” 

Bea had to leave, citing a meeting with Max. She wasn’t gone five minutes before Mel showed up with a large potted cactus, which she set on a table by the window before coming over to hug him.

“Melody. Melody, Mel, Mellie, Melster. I’m glad you’re here. You’re my favorite person whose name starts with ‘m.’”

“Well, that’s going to ruin Murray’s day.” Mel gave Ted’s cheek a peck. She pulled up a chair and sat down, cutting a glance over her shoulder at Booster. “Exactly how high is he? I thought you said he was lucid today.” 

Booster made a see-sawing gesture, and Mel chuckled. Ted frowned at them both, hurt. His injured feelings didn’t languish, though, because Mel had brought him presents. There was a card from the office, signed by everyone from the lab techs to the marketing team to the custodial staff. Angie and Murray had chipped in for the cactus, which was allegedly of a hardy variety that even Ted was unlikely to kill. It was cute. 

“We’ll all be glad to have you back,” Mel told him, propping up the card on his tray where he could see it, “but I promise I’m keeping an eye on things for you in the meantime.” 

Someone knocked lightly on the wall. A cart pushed through the curtain, followed by a freckle-faced nurse whose biceps could have given Wonder Woman a run for her money. This had to be Jackie. “Good morning, Ted,” she said cheerfully. “Lunch delivery.”

“Sorry I tried to fight you,” he blurted out. 

“Excuse me, what?” said Mel. 

Jackie giggled, dragging the cart up alongside the bed. There was a bowl and spoon on top of it, along with a jug of water and a single slice of bread. “No hard feelings. Hi, Michael.” She smiled at Booster and then her gaze turned on Mel. “I don’t think we’ve met. Are you Ted’s girlfriend?” 

Ted guffawed and then gasped, clutching the pillow against his chest. Booster clucked disapprovingly, helping support Ted’s shoulders as he breathed through the discomfort. 

“God help us both if I were. He’s my obnoxious little brother,” said Mel.

“Not exactly a brother. You took my virginity.” 

Booster sucked in a hitching breath, choked, and then started coughing loudly. 

Mel’s cheeks flushed angrily as she glared at Ted. “Okay, not _exactly_ , Mr. Pedantic.” Her attention flicked over to Jackie, who’d gone wide-eyed. “To clarify, we’re not related. Just old friends. He’s incapable of keeping his big mouth shut, especially when he’s on drugs.” 

“Sorry,” Ted mumbled, embarrassed. 

“It’s fine, honey,” Jackie said, her easy smile returning now that she’d been assured she hadn’t stumbled into an iniquitous den of incest. “I shouldn’t have assumed. Besides, I hear all sorts of things in here. Some of the things patients have said to me would curl your hair.” She snapped the bed tray into place and put the bowl and spoon on top of it. The bowl was filled with something pasty-white and gloopy. 

“It’s blended up oatmeal,” she continued. “Not exactly fine dining, I know, but it’s best to start with something simple, and we need to get some nutrients in you. One of us can help you with the spoon if you’d like.”

“I’ve got it,” Ted said hastily. The tray was close to his lap, but he discovered that his shoulders were sore, like he’d gone twenty rounds with a punching bag. The skin under his arms felt tender and bruised. Still, he gripped the spoon determinedly. His right hand quivered when he tried to lift it up to his mouth, so he switched to his left. 

Mel, Jackie, and Booster made idle small talk, pretending that they weren’t watching Ted struggle to feed himself. The oatmeal was slightly sweetened, but it didn’t taste great. It didn’t go down easily either, since swallowing was painful, and he had to wash it down with sips of water. His whole throat felt bruised. It probably was, since he’d had a tube stuck down his windpipe. 

He finished about a quarter of the bowl before he had to stop. Jackie advised him to let it settle for a few minutes, and she went to the nurses’ station to get him a numbing throat spray. Ted waited, but things weren’t settling. In fact, he was starting to feel nauseated. 

The conversation between Booster and Mel abruptly stopped, and Booster’s hand was on Ted’s arm, nudging him. “Buddy? You’re looking kind of funny.” 

Ted didn’t answer, preoccupied with the tilting sensation in his stomach. He set the spoon back on his tray, moving very carefully. He shouldn’t move too fast -- if he did . . . . well, he wasn’t sure what would happen, but he knew it wouldn’t be good. 

“The painkillers are probably wearing off,” Mel said to Booster. “The dopey grin’s gone, and look at his eyes -- he can focus them again. Are you hurting, Ted? I can go get a nurse.” 

Acid was crawling up his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, fumbling for the pillow to brace himself as his insides heaved. “Stomach,” he gritted out. A chair squealed across the tile, and he could hear Mel’s heels clicking out of the room at a run. Booster’s hand slid down his arm and caught his wrist, squeezing tight. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. She’s gonna get Jackie. No big deal, it’s okay.” 

“Booster,” Ted croaked, hugging the pillow desperately as he tried not to retch. “Booster, if I throw up----”

Booster’s eyes widened with sudden realization. “Oh, shit. Shit! Ted, don’t throw up!”

“I don’t think I have any say in it. Oh, God.” 

He felt hands pulling and shoving at him, turning him onto his side; he had just enough time to hope that someone was holding a splash pan under him before he vomited. He felt a split-second’s relief, the nausea subsiding, and then his chest was on fire. 

He’d been prised apart. He had to have been. It felt like he had been, like someone had jammed a crowbar between his ribs and split him right in two again. His breath was coming in gasping sobs. His legs jerked and shook. Faintly, he could hear Habi talking to him, telling him to calm down, that he was safe and that the pain would pass. She was tugging at his wrists, and he let her pull his arms away from his chest; he gripped the bed rail instead as she and Jackie rolled him carefully onto his back. 

“Relax, honey. Give yourself a minute to recover.” 

“Damn,” Ted gritted out. He swiped a trembling hand over his face, blinking the tears out of his eyes. “Ow. _Damn_ , that hurt.”

“I’ll bet,” Habi said sympathetically. “Can you lie flat for me now? I need to check your incision.”

Ted focused on unclenching his muscles by degrees, forcing himself to stay still as Habi and Jackie peeled back his bandages, talking in hushed voices to each other. When he felt like he could breathe again, he opened his eyes and saw Booster standing at the foot of the bed, looking stricken. 

Cool hands pressed against his skin, probing experimentally. “Wow, your stitches didn’t even rip,” Jackie said, sounding impressed. “Well done.” 

Ted exhaled, relieved. “I don’t think I can take credit for that. I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, honey. There was a chance that you would react to the drug this way, so I should have been monitoring more closely. We’re going to give you something for the nausea and switch your pain meds so this doesn’t happen again, alright?” 

“Teddy, you good?”

Ted managed a weak thumbs-up. “Where’s Mel?”

Booster glanced around, startled, like he expected to see Mel hiding behind the IV pole. 

“Is she the redhead?” Habi asked. “I saw her leave. She looked like she needed a minute.” 

“Boost, could you---?”

“I’ll check on her.” 

Booster didn’t come back until everything was cleaned up and an anti-nausea med had been duly administered, but he brought Mel with him. Mel’s eyes were pink-rimmed and swollen. She didn’t say anything, sitting down in the nearest chair and reaching for Ted. 

“I’m fine,” Ted assured her. The pain was already a distant memory. Whatever they’d given him now was making him comfortably sleepy, calm without feeling disoriented. Booster settled into the other chair, slipping his phone out of his pocket.

Mel patted his hand. “We’ll be right here,” she said. 

***

After three tries, they’d finally hit on the right combination of analgesics for Ted’s physiology. The pain was dulled to a constant but manageable ache, and he didn’t have to try to think through a fog anymore either. He spent most of his time sleeping, but the periods of wakefulness were coming more frequently, and the incision site showed no signs of infection. His vitals and temperature were good. By the third day, he could even walk a short distance under careful supervision. 

Booster, Bea, Tora, and Mel took turns keeping him company, doing their best to distract him and keep his spirits up. Tora amused them all by knitting miniature articles of clothing for Ted’s cactus; he began looking forward to waking up from a nap to see what she’d made next. The cactus -- now named Bruce -- had a yellow beanie, four tiny mittens, and a scarf, and Tora was making good progress on a vest. 

While Ted thankfully hadn’t lost his lunch since that first attempt, his appetite was all but gone. He ate when the nurses bullied him into it, but he picked at his food, uninterested. This, more than anything else, seemed to worry his friends. He wasn’t trying to be difficult, but it hurt to eat, and his stomach felt leaden afterwards, making him sluggish and irritable.

Booster had taken to bringing in the meal trays himself, evidently under the impression that he could make Ted feel sufficiently guilty. It worked at first, but after three days of it, Ted was building up an immunity to those pleading baby blues. 

“I’m not hungry,” said Ted.

“You haven’t eaten since yesterday,” Booster wheedled. “Can’t you at least try?”

“Sure, if you want to watch me puke and cry again.” 

Booster gave him an unhappy look and carried the breakfast tray back out of the room. Ted dozed on and off until he was shaken awake some indeterminate amount of time later. Booster was holding a tall styrofoam cup, and he pried open the lid to let Ted look inside. 

“Is that a---” 

“Double Dark Chocolate Malt from Dairy Maid.” 

“Booster, I can’t have that.” 

Booster thrust it under his nose, jabbing the straw obnoxiously against Ted’s closed lips. “Yes, you can. Habi said that right now it’s more important that you get enough calories to heal, so until you’re able to eat normally again, you can have a damn milkshake.” 

Ted tentatively took it. His eyes almost rolled back in his head when the cold, sweet chocolate ice cream slid over his tongue and down his sore throat. “I’m going to marry whoever made this,” he swore.

“I’m sure you and Hannah G. will be very happy together.”

Ted risked another sip, waiting a minute to see if the nausea was lying in wait; when it failed to appear, he made short work of the rest of his milkshake. Booster was beaming triumphantly as he left to discard the empty cup, and Ted couldn’t help but smile as he heard his friend crowing to everyone at the nurses’ station. 

***

On the sixth day, Ted was cleared for discharge. 

Habi was instructing Booster on the finer points of wound care; he and Ted watched, fascinated, as she walked them through the process of cleaning around the stitches and inside the open puncture where the chest tube had been. The central incision neatly bisected his torso from below his collarbone to the top of his abdomen, centered almost perfectly between his pectoral muscles. The symmetry of it was sort of interesting. 

“Ted, this is so gross,” Booster said, delighted. He carefully wiggled his gloved finger where it was poking through the nickel-sized hole in Ted’s thoracic wall. “It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“There’s sensation but no pain. It’s weird, though.”

“That’s nothing,” Habi said. “In medical school, I had a patient with a fistula so deep that you could see her tailbone.” 

“ _Dude._ ” 

“Oh, make sure the gauze isn’t packed too tightly, Michael. There has to be enough room for any excess fluid to drain out.” She and Ted both watched attentively as Booster finished irrigating the site before covering it loosely with another gauze pad. “Nicely done.” 

Next, Habi showed them how to wrap the bandages in such a way as to brace Ted’s ribs without covering the dressing so tightly that it impeded healing. “Have you ever thought about a career in healthcare?” she asked Booster as they collected the discarded packaging from the bed. “With a strong stomach like yours, you’d make a good nurse.” 

Booster chuckled and shook his head. When Habi left to get the discharge paperwork, Ted remarked, “You really would make a good nurse.” 

“Would I have to wear a skirt and a little hat?”

“I’ve seen you in a sexy nurse costume. It’s impossible for something like that to be up to sterile medical standards.”

Booster’s brow furrowed. “When was I wearing a sexy nurse costume?” he asked.

“Halloween 1997.” The fond memory of Booster’s legs in white fishnet tights still occasionally popped up, unbidden, in Ted’s subconscious. 

“Oh, right! I could pull off the look, but I don’t think I have what it takes for that kind of work.” 

“I don’t see why not,” Ted said. “You’ve been taking great care of me.”

To Ted’s surprise, Booster blushed. 

For all the fuss beforehand, the discharge process was fairly speedy; after the release papers were signed, Habi and Jackie gave him last-minute instructions, a stack of aftercare information and numbers to call, and wished him well. An orderly bundled him into a wheelchair while Booster went to pull the car around, and then Ted was being pushed, squinting, into the too-bright sunlight. 

The fresh air and an open expanse of sky were a bit overwhelming after a week of being confined to a single climate-controlled, white-walled suite. Booster and the orderly transferred him into the car, and then Booster ran back upstairs to grab Bruce and their travel bags while Ted caught his breath. 

“Do you have your water?” Booster asked, climbing into the driver’s seat after tossing their bags in the trunk. 

“Yup.”

“Bruce?”

“Mmhm.” 

“Your coughing pillow?”

“Michael,” Ted said, grinning. “Just drive.” 

***

The trip home lifted Ted’s spirits immeasurably. It was a beautiful day, and a nice breeze ruffled his hair through the rolled-down window. He was tired and sore, sure, but he was free to go back to his own house, free to wear actual clothes again, and free to rest his head against the door and listen to Booster sing along with the radio under his breath. 

Booster pulled the car into the garage and helped Ted out of his seat. Skeets was waiting for them, the door to the house already propped open. There was a glittery plastic bowler hat -- a leftover from their New Year’s party -- strapped to him.

“Skeets, my man, you look classy as hell,” Ted said. 

“I’m flattered, sir. Welcome home.” 

They shuffled their way inside the house. Ted paused to take in the sight of his living room. Two clusters of balloons were anchored to the bookshelf, and elegant paper garlands stretched across the walls. A pennant banner that read _WELCOME HOME, TED!_ in gold foil letters had been strung over the TV. 

Ted’s sound system flicked on, softly piping in bluesy piano music. Skeets floated over with two more New Year’s hats; Booster plopped one on Ted’s head and put on the other one himself, snapping the elastic band under his chin with a flourish. 

“Tora wanted to have a welcome home party, but I figured you’d be too tired,” Booster explained. “So we compromised. All decorations are courtesy of her and DJ Skeets. Here, come sit on the couch so you can look at your loot.” 

The coffee table in front of the sofa was covered with several vases of flowers, a few gift bags bursting with tissue paper, and a stack of envelopes that had to be at least seven inches high. “What’s all this?” Ted asked as he lowered himself very slowly onto the sofa, keeping his torso as straight as possible.

“There’s a funny custom in this time period,” Booster said. “You get yourself sawed open and then everyone you know gives you free stuff.” 

“Smartass.” Ted sniffed one of the bouquets appreciatively, reaching for the card to see who it was from. Considering that it was foxglove, he was unsurprised to find that it was Barbara. He put the card down to examine the pot of begonias next to them, which looked sort of. . . . flattened. “What happened to these? Looks like the delivery person ran over them.” 

“I retrieved them from the disposal unit after Booster discarded them,” Skeets tattled. 

Ted plucked up the crumpled card before Booster could grab it. It read, ‘ _Best wishes, and get well soon! -- Love, Clark, Lois, and Jon_.’ Ted bit his lip to keep a straight face. “Superman sent me flowers, and you threw them in the trash?” 

“Oh, look, here are more cards for you. You should read these.” 

“Booster.” 

“They’re begonias. You’re allergic!”

“No, I’m not.” 

“Begonias have an extremely low pollen count, sir,” Skeets said. “As a point of fact, they are considered all but hypoallergenic.” 

“I’ll tell you where you can point your facts, you rat fink.” 

Ted started working his way through the stack of envelopes, listening to Booster and Skeets bicker with half an ear. There was a warm feeling in his chest as he read messages from friends and acquaintances he hadn’t seen in years. The hero community was far-flung, and it was easy to lose contact when you were fighting aliens every Tuesday, but damn if they didn’t know how to pull through for a former Leaguer when there was trouble. Not that Ted was in trouble, but it meant a lot to be remembered, to know that someone who had as much on their plate as the Flash or Ray Palmer had taken a moment to think, ‘ _Who’s getting heart surgery? That schlubb who used to dress like a bug? I should send him a card._ ’ 

Booster was now trying to argue that the begonias could have been a trap from Poison Ivy, so Ted figured it was time to intervene. 

“Hey, look.” He held up a card with Captain Atom’s tidy signature and a picture of a pug wearing a surgical mask and stethoscope. “I knew Nate loved me, deep-down. This totally makes up for him not returning my calls.”

Booster laughed, coming to sit with him as he finished up the stack. “Do you need anything? Anything you want to do?” he asked.

“An actual shower would be nice,” Ted said wistfully. For a solid week, he’d had nothing but sponge baths and one brief, lukewarm hose-down in a shower stall. If someone set fire to his hair, it would probably burn for a month straight. 

“I’ll need to wrap your dressings first, but sure.”

The thought of a hot shower with decent water pressure was tempting indeed, but there was a small caveat. “I don’t think I can lift my arms high enough to wash my hair,” Ted confessed.

“I’ll do it,” Booster said immediately. “It’s not a good idea for you to go in there alone anyway.”

“You’re alright with that?”

“Of course. No offense, but you really need a shower.”

Ted huffed a laugh and grasped Booster’s elbow to steady himself as he sat up cautiously. “Let’s do this.” 

By the time they’d made it upstairs, gotten his bandages waterproofed, and hunted down some clean pajamas, Ted was exhausted enough to wish that he’d just gone to bed. Still, he’d gotten this far, and his bathroom was filled with steam and the comforting smell of his own soap. Booster, who’d donned a pair of swim shorts, finished adjusting the water temperature and then turned around expectantly. 

“I’m not sure I can stand much longer,” Ted admitted. 

Booster thought for a minute. “I’ll put a folding chair in the tub. You can sit, I can wash your hair, and we’ll have you out of here in no time.” 

Under any other circumstances and with any other person, Ted would have been humiliated. He expected some teasing, but Booster surprised him again by not cracking a single joke. He helped Ted undress and sit in the chair before lathering up his hair, his hands firm and confident, like it was something they did every day. The hot water felt exquisite against Ted’s stiff muscles, washing away stale sweat and the lingering bleachy smell of the hospital. 

“I’m not mad about the begonias, you know,” Ted said, just for something to talk about. “Although I do have to agree with Skeets that your issue with Clark is beginning to border on the pathological.” 

Booster grunted and scrubbed his scalp harder. He detached the shower head to rinse out his hair, urging Ted to tip his head back while he scritched at Ted’s scalp with his blunt nails. 

“Man, you have no idea how amazing that feels.”

“Glad to hear it, because I’m going to do all over again in another minute,” Booster declared, in a tone that brooked no argument. “It’s so disgusting up here that your hair’s lost its curl.” 

“Fine by me,” Ted said. “Seriously, thank you.”

“You’d do the same for me. You _did_ do the same for me.” 

Ted stilled. Booster didn’t like talking about that time, those long months that he’d spent trapped in the mechanical life-support suit. He preferred to pretend that the whole ordeal had never happened, so when he did mention it, it was cause for sitting up and paying attention. 

“I would have gone nuts if it hadn’t been for you,” Booster said candidly. The shampoo bottle squeaked, and then Booster’s slick hands were back in his hair, massaging. “You took good care of me. You worked so hard to fix that damn armor, and I barely even thanked you for it. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”

Well, he would have died, for one thing, instead of being dragged back to life like an off-brand zombie Cyborg, but Ted kept that thought to himself. He’d never regret what he’d done to keep Booster alive, but it would always bother him that he’d caused so much suffering in the process. There were lots of things that he could have done better, things he could have been smarter about. 

He did remember doing this for Booster, or an approximation of it. When Booster was first adjusting to the suit, clumsy and in terrible pain, he hadn’t been able to work around the plates that couldn’t be removed. It had been absolutely miserable for him, being shut up in unyielding, rank body armor and unable to even keep himself clean. Ted had tried to allow him his dignity where he could, but there had been nothing dignified about it. Sponging him down with sanitary wipes had been as close as they could get to a bath for him for weeks. 

“It was no big deal,” Ted said, trying to get a read on Booster’s neutral expression. 

“Neither is this.” He moved away, and a second later he handed Ted a soapy washcloth. “That was when I really knew.”

Ted started scrubbing himself, careful not to bend at the waist or touch his wrapped bandages. “Knew what?”

Booster didn’t answer. He rinsed Ted’s hair again, and they watched the foamy suds swirl down the drain. “We’ve been through some crap.”

“We have,” Ted agreed. 

“Even if we hadn’t, I think we’d have still ended up here anyway.”

“What, in this shower?”

There was a significant pause before Booster’s hands started moving again. “I’m taking back every nice thing that I said about you ever,” he announced. “You’re awful.” 

“You know how much I like ruining a moment.” 

“And yet somehow I’m still here,” Booster said. “That’s what you do, when you love someone.” He flicked Ted’s ear and then shut off the water. “Ready to get out?” 

After he’d been duly toweled off, they retreated to Ted’s bedroom. Booster changed his dressings, as efficient as any nurse, and helped him into loose pajama pants and a threadbare old t-shirt. Skeets brought up a bottle of water and more painkillers. It was only mid-afternoon, but Ted’s head had barely touched the pillow before he fell asleep. He napped through the rest of the day, stirring from the bed long enough to take his evening meds and brush his teeth before settling in for the night. 

Some hours later, Ted woke up without knowing what had woken him, since he wasn’t in pain. He squinted blearily at the clock on his bedside table. _11:17 pm._ Something rustled over by the door, and Ted turned to look. “Boost?”

Booster poked his head in awkwardly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“‘S’okay.” Ted muffled a yawn in his palm. “Something wrong?”

“No. Not really. I mean, no.” 

Ted blinked at him sleepily and waited. 

“I dunno," Booster muttered, leaning one hip against the door jamb. “I was worried.” 

“What about? Me? I’m fine.” 

“My room is too far away. It was fine at St. Marcy’s because the nurses were there and you had heart monitors and stuff. There’s no monitor here. I keep thinking, what if you needed something and I didn’t hear?” 

“I’m told that I have a pretty good set of pipes on me,” Ted said. “You’d hear.”

“Yeah, but what if?”

“C’mere.” Ted patted the mattress next to him. 

He didn’t have to ask twice. Booster made himself at home, slipping under the sheet and stealing a pillow. They shuffled around on the mattress, the house dark and still around them, and then settled. “‘Night,” Ted mumbled, his eyes already drifting shut. 

“Thanks,” Booster whispered.

 _That's what you do, when you love someone_. 

***

Booster swept into Ted’s bedroom with a watering pot, arguing with someone on the phone. He crossed over to the window and watered Bruce the cactus, who now had a knitted cape to match his beanie and mittens. He watered the other flowers next, plucking out the shriveled blossoms, and then disappeared back into the hall, still arguing. 

Ted smiled and shifted his computer on his lap, paging through the online menus for several local delicatessens. He’d almost made up his mind when Booster strode back in, carrying a steaming cup of what smelled like chamomile tea. 

“That was Bea on the phone,” he said, sitting on Ted’s bed and taking a long drag from his mug. “I think she isn’t mad at me anymore. Or she's at least acknowledging that I exist again." 

“I knew she would. You guys will be alright again soon, Boost. Prove to her that you’re the hero we know you can be, and she’ll give you a second chance.” 

“Not everyone has as much faith in me as you do.” 

“Not everyone knows you as well as I do,” Ted countered. “Go talk to her and Max when you’re ready. They’ll hear you out.”

“We’ll see,” Booster sighed. He craned his neck to see Ted’s laptop screen. “What are you doing?” 

“Ordering a thank-you gift for Habi and Jackie and the other nurses,” Ted said. “Which do you think they’d like better: a sandwich platter with a fruit and veggie tray, or a charcuterie board with a box of really nice chocolates?” 

“Why not both?”

“I like the way you think, Mr. Gold.” Ted put in an order for everything.

Around noon, Booster went out on a grocery run, leaving Ted with a strawberry protein shake and firm orders not to get up. Ten days after surgery, Ted could walk just fine, but getting out of bed was a problem and his blood pressure was still screwy. It was best not to ambulate until someone big enough to catch him was within shouting distance, and Skeets definitely didn’t qualify. In fact, Skeets wasn’t even in the room anymore. For some inexplicable and hilarious reason, Skeets was deeply suspicious of Ted’s Roomba, and Ted could hear him following it as it slowly vacuumed the hallway. 

After idly checking the news and seeing if Barbara was online, Ted decided to bypass the remote admin block on the Kord Omniversal intranet and slipped in to see how things were going. Mel, being a world-class killjoy, caught him almost immediately. 

**VPCase8491:** _Get off the server, Ted._

 **TKord7417:** _You can’t make me._

 **VPCase8491:** _If you don’t get off the server, I’m going to grill you about your thing with Booster._

Oh. Right. Mel had been standing right there. Of course she’d seen. He sat there for a minute, trying to decide what to say, or how much to say. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get in an argument about his love life right now, but part of him thought it might be nice to have someone to confide in. 

Mel solved his dilemma for him. _I’m kidding. I won’t bother you about it. It’s your business. Besides, Shiny Shorts and I had a chat._

Ted winced.

 _You’re making a face right now, aren’t you? Stop. I was nice to him. It’s not like we had much else to do while we were waiting for you to wake up._ There was a pause, and then: _I might have misjudged him._

 _You’re kidding._ For all her stellar qualities, Mel had a judgmental streak a mile wide, and she’d never approved of Booster. Once she’d made up her mind about someone, she didn’t change it. 

_‘Might’ was the operative word there. I used to think he took advantage of you, but I’m starting to think that was unfair. He’s an opportunistic bimbo who can’t hold down a job to save his life, but he’s not a total flake. Now get your butt offline. You’re still on medical leave._

_Give me half an hour,_ Ted negotiated. _I’m just going to check my email._

_Fine. That’s it. If Takamoto tries to pull you into something, don’t let him. I’ll know._

_Got it, Big Brother._

_Shut up, Ted._ There was another brief pause. _Glad you’re feeling better._

Ted chuckled, closing down the chat and tabbing over into his work inbox. _347 new emails, Christ on a cracker._ He scrolled through them until his eye was caught by the subject heading that said, simply, ‘ **From Dad** ’. 

Ted’s immediate impulse was to delete it, but curiosity got the better of him. 

_Hello, Theodore,_

_I’ve recently been in Duluth on business. I took this photograph at the port and thought of you. I trust you’re recovering well._

_Regards,_

_Dad_

The picture was a shot of the port at Duluth, a massive freighter ship skimming under the Aerial Lift Bridge. Ted knew the view well, having walked along that seawall dozens of times as a child.

Mom had loved the Lakes. When Ted was young, they’d often summered in Grand Marais and Duluth, in the Blackrock cliffs of Marquette or on Mackinac Island. The rolling stretch of cold water and the rocky beaches had reminded her of the port in Novorossiysk where she’d grown up. She never seemed quite as relaxed as she was by the water with the wind in her hair, rolling up her jeans to wade in the shallows, laughing as she coaxed Ted into the chilly lake with her. Once in a while, she’d gotten Dad in the water too, all three of them digging their toes into the sand.

His parents had loved each other. Ted could remember them being happy, as odd a couple as they were, when times were good. But Dad hadn’t been able to withstand the bad times, the strain of becoming a caretaker for an ill spouse. 

Now that he was older, he thought he understood to a certain extent. It was a particular kind of hell, watching someone that you loved suffer and being helpless to stop it. It demanded sacrifice and selflessness. Not everyone had the fortitude to endure something like that. But there was a difference between understanding and forgiving. Dad’s weakness had broken Mom’s spirit when she’d needed it most. He’d left his wife to deteriorate alone. He’d left Ted alone to pick up the pieces.

Ted saved the photo to his computer and, after a moment’s thought, logged out of the server and closed his laptop. 

For so many years, he’d lived with the quiet fear of turning out like his mother, facing the end of his life knowing that he’d been abandoned by someone who’d promised to love him for better or worse -- that he’d been loved but not _enough_. Putting a name to this thing with Booster would attach expectations to it, expectations that could be disappointed. 

Ted put a hand to his chest, feeling the swollen ridge of stitched skin under the bandage. 

It was difficult to categorize the edge of tension between Booster and him, an energy that had drawn them together right from the beginning. It had intensified and ebbed at different points in their friendship, but it linked them like an electric current. He knew, from various pointed comments, that others had occasionally felt it too, or at least noticed the looks and touches that lingered a few seconds too long. They’d always tiptoed over it, talked around it, glanced at from the corners of their eyes -- never directly, never straight on, like it might self-destruct if they acknowledged it. Ted had always thought that he’d managed to keep those feelings separate from their friendship, something that could exist in a different space. They had seemed, somehow, safer there. 

But he hadn’t kept them separate at all, had he?

Whose name topped his beneficiary list? Who was the first person he’d put down as an allowed visitor at the surgery center? Who had permission to pick up his prescriptions at the pharmacy? Who was his primary emergency contact? Who did people think to call first, when they couldn’t contact Ted? Who was the only other person who had administrative access to Ted’s house, to his workshop, to the Bug, to his document safe? 

Ted knew for a fact that it was his own name on Booster’s life insurance policy from the Corps, his own signature on the credit card that he’d given Booster for emergencies. He had power of attorney, if Booster was ever incapacitated in the line of duty. He had access to Booster’s bank accounts. He knew Booster’s social security number, his credit score. He’d co-signed more than a few of Booster’s leases. 

Their personal lives -- their civilian lives -- were already tangled together, and there was a paper trail to prove it. In the eyes of the law, there were already expectations. But Ted hadn’t expected anything. He hadn’t asked. 

The thing was, he hadn’t _had_ to. 

Booster had been there at St. Marcy’s every day, catching cat naps in an uncomfortable chair so Ted wouldn’t be alone. He’d played companion and nurse and entertainer. Booster, who couldn’t be bothered to remember his own email password, had kept meticulous track of Ted’s medication schedule, cleaned the pus out of his incision without complaint, bought groceries, helped him bathe, cooked for him, sat in boring waiting rooms with him, cleaned his house. He’d forced Skeets to wear a party hat just to make Ted smile. However misguided, he’d been willing to risk the time stream to make Ted well again. He’d kissed Ted, heedless of who was watching, and exposed his vulnerabilities for everyone to see with no guarantee that Ted would come back. 

And all without expectation. 

Ted bit his lip. 

It was risky, but the most rewarding things always were.

***

The garage door slammed, and Ted heard Skeets abandon his Roomba surveillance to zip downstairs. He listened to the cheerful rumble of Booster’s voice, accompanied by the rustling of paper bags and the clattering of the kitchen cabinets as he unpacked the groceries. Ted finished the rest of his protein shake, waiting patiently. 

There were muffled footsteps on the stairs, and then Booster was peeking into his room, smiling when he saw that Ted was awake. 

“Blueberries were on sale, two for three bucks. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how cheap fruit is. You’d have to pay, like, fifty bucks for a carton in my time. You want anything before I make lunch, man?”

“Come and sit for a minute, would you?”

Booster came and sat, toeing his shoes off as he made himself comfortable. “What’s up? Bored? I got a movie we could watch.” 

Ted put his hand lightly against Booster’s arm, meeting his questioning gaze. What was there to be afraid of, at this point? He’d survived everything that life had thrown at him. Even if the worst case scenario unfolded tonight, he’d survive it too. 

He was a beetle. They were hard to squash. 

“Booster,” he said, “I’d like to kiss you. If you’d like that.”

Booster’s forearm bunched under his palm, tensing; for a moment, he looked wary. His blue eyes searched Ted’s face, and Ted met his gaze steadily. “Yeah,” he said, a little wonderingly. 

Relief rippled over Ted, at least until it occurred to him that a slight impediment remained. He felt himself smiling ruefully. “You might have help me out here. I don’t think I can roll over.” 

Booster’s eyes crinkled warmly. A second later, he was kneeling on the mattress, hunched awkwardly over Ted. His hand plucked almost anxiously at Ted’s shirt before settling where his waist met his hip, warm as a hot-water bottle. He brushed Ted’s cheek with his nose and then waited expectantly, his breath puffing, just a little rushed, between their lips. 

Ted closed his eyes, still smiling, and kissed him. 

It was a nice kiss. Sweet, respectful, dry-lipped. Then Booster’s lips parted, and his tongue was wet and warm as it pressed curiously into Ted’s mouth. His fingers petted at Ted’s chin, coaxing, as the kiss gradually deepened into something more confident, hotter, wetter, _hungrier_. Ted made an approving noise, and Booster’s other hand slid into his hair, bringing him nearer. His tongue swept over Ted’s and laved at his upper lip, sucking. He breathed a shaky sigh into Ted’s mouth, pressing even closer, and the slow beat of arousal flickered to life in Ted’s tired body. It was a check that he was in no condition to cash, but he savored the feeling anyway, the familiar kindling of heat and sexual anticipation. He bit the thick curve of Booster’s lower lip, and Booster’s moan was so loud that it startled both of them apart.

They giggled quietly together, half giddy. Booster bunted his head up against Ted’s, leaning into his forehead until their noses touched.

“Ted? You’re breathing pretty hard.”

Booster’s own breathing sounded rough, but Ted was in a diplomatic enough mood not to point that out to him. “No kidding.” 

Pressing one last lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, Booster sat back on his heels. Ted craned his neck, chasing his lips, but quickly gave up; he really _was_ out of breath, and sex was included on the list of exertion no-nos from the surgeon’s office. As much fun as he was having, he wasn’t willing to try to push his new valve to the point of meltdown; he might die, and that would traumatize Booster. Besides, there was nothing more ignoble than exiting this earthly plane with an erection.

“Are we going to talk about it?” he asked.

The expression on Booster’s face was difficult to place, somewhere between doubtful disbelief and hope. “Do you want to?”

“You know what, I think I do.” Ted positioned himself more comfortably on his pillows, rearranging the folds of the Snuggie around his knees. He offered Booster his hand and was reassured by how readily Booster took it, intertwining their fingers. “Just so we’re on the same page, I’m referring-----”

“To the kissing,” Booster interrupted. 

“Well, yes, but also the literal years of sexual tension. That isn’t just something I imagined, right? That’s been an actual thing for us?”

“It’s definitely been a thing.” 

Despite himself, and all of the catastrophic ways this could go wrong, Ted felt instantly calmer. Defining the parameters of a supposition always helped settle his mind. “Okay. Just so we’re clear. Everyone and their mother feels the need to point it out constantly, so I figured it was real, but you never know.” 

“If you knew-----”

“It’s a different dynamic, going from platonic to romantic,” Ted pointed out. He spared a few seconds to gather his thoughts. “Not everyone can make the jump. I knew what I felt, and sometimes it seemed like you felt that way too. But it was a different time, back then -- we were so young, and the world wasn’t as accepting as it is now. And I was afraid, I guess. Afraid that I would ask too much of you. Afraid that we wouldn’t be compatible as partners.” Ted looked down at their laced fingers and rubbed Booster’s flight ring with the ball of his thumb. “But we’re already partners, aren’t we? We have been for a long time.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we have,” Booster said, a little hoarsely. His grip tightened, teetering on the edge of too-hard. 

“What is it?” Ted prodded. 

“I don’t get to keep the people I love.” 

Ted felt gutted. It took him a few seconds to get his voice back. “Don’t say that.” 

Booster looked at him helplessly. “I can’t lose you too. Promise me we’ll be okay. Can you promise me that?”

“You know I can’t. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” 

Booster was silent, clearly mulling this over. All at once, he blew out a gusty sigh and lifted Ted’s hand, placing a light smooch on his knuckles. “Fair enough,” he said, with an edge of determination. “So you’re not mad.”

“Mad about what?” Ted asked, taken aback.

“The hospital. I thought we’d have time to figure it out. There was always more time. I could pick the perfect moment, make sure it went right.” He pulled a face, uncomfortable. “The moment was never perfect. Every time I stepped forward, you stepped back. I don’t know. I just. . . . I just wanted to do something right for once, for you. We get thrown into buildings, or zapped into space, or hit by lightning -- people like us don’t get sick, like normal people. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that, or embarrass you, but I waited so long that I ran out of time. I love you so much. I couldn’t let you go in there without showing you that.” 

“I’m not mad,” Ted said softly. “And I love you too, you know.”

“Of course you do,” Booster said, and he said it so easily, with such careless confidence, that Ted had to kiss him again. That they loved each other, that they were family, was an immutable fact of the universe and had been for years. It was by no means the first time they’d said it to each other either, but as he held Booster’s face between his hands as they kissed, it maybe meant something a little different this time. Not _more_ , necessarily, but _different_. A good sort of different. An evolution. 

There were a few things yet. Ted gathered what brain cells were still firing on all cylinders and reluctantly put a smidgen of distance between them. He saw Booster’s eyes dip back down to his mouth, distracted, and he shivered pleasantly. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” he asked. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve never been interested in settling down before. That’s what I meant when I was talking about compatibility. I’m not saying I’m going to buy us rings and call up the rabbi, but I’m almost forty, and I’d like to be serious about this. I need to know what you want. You’ve never wanted to get serious about anyone.”

Booster looked at him like he’d sprouted three extra heads. “Because they weren’t you.” 

There was a pregnant pause. Ted tipped his head back onto his pillow and made a referee t-signal. “I’m calling a timeout. I need a few minutes to cope with how monumentally stupid I am.” 

“Nah,” Booster said graciously, chuckling. “You’re just overthinking things again.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t want anyone else, Ted.” 

The warmth in Ted’s chest rose into his face, but he didn’t try to hide it. “For the record, neither do I.”

“So there it is. You’re in love with me and I’m in love with you and we’d like to see each other naked. I don’t see the problem.” 

“Michael Carter, I’m starting to think you really are the brains of this operation.” Feeling ridiculous, like a teenager fumbling with his date on his parents’ couch, Ted hooked a finger into Booster’s collar, tugging pointedly; he seemed happy to oblige, stretching out on the bed. There was some fumbling as they tried to figure out whose limbs were where and how they could angle themselves without putting pressure on Ted’s incision or jostling his ribs, but they worked it out eventually. They kissed languidly, all the urgency of before settling into something simple and molasses-slow. When they paused to take a breather, Booster looked smug, but there was enough of a boyish flush high on his cheeks to make it seem endearing rather than annoying. “See? You’re wearing your Snuggie, and I still made out with you. There’s all the proof of me being serious about this that you need.” 

“Well, you’re the one who slipped me some tongue while I was wearing a shower cap and a backless hospital gown, so I don’t think it’s my taste that’s in question here,” Ted retorted. “Wait, is this a kink? You can tell me, I won’t judge.”

Booster condescendingly patted the shapeless fabric, giving Ted’s thigh a sneaky feel-up in the process. “To be fair, I’ve seen your closet. This isn’t really any different from what you normally wear.” 

“I would take offense at that, but you’ve caught me in a good mood.”

“Oh, I can tell.” He leered suggestively. 

“Does this mean I’m going to be subjected to your sorry excuse for innuendo now?” Ted asked. “Is it too late to take it all back?”

Booster bumped his pelvis against Ted’s hip. “Take _this_ back.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ted laughed. Bracing his ribs with a pillow, he bumped right back, and it actually took him a second to realize that Booster was half-hard. He raised his eyebrows, and Booster smirked right back at him, shameless. 

“Mmm, I can help with that.” Ted started to roll over and then immediately froze when pain throbbed along his sides with an intensity that left him mildly nauseous. He laid back and took several shallow breaths. “No, actually I can’t.” 

“It’s cool,” Booster said. He took his hand off Ted’s thigh and tucked his arm around Ted’s waist instead, stretching out his long legs and squishing his cheek up against Ted’s shoulder. He didn’t look disappointed, but Ted still felt guilty, as well as rather disappointed himself. Their timing was sort of abysmal. 

“I’m sorry.” Restrictions on vascular activity aside, heavy doses of painkillers and a cracked sternum weren’t conducive to being in the mood for sex. In the spirit of full disclosure, Ted felt compelled to add, “I’ll be out of commission for a while, Boost. I’m going to have to stay on first base for a month at the very least.” 

“It’s cool,” Booster repeated, giving him a somewhat incredulous look. “I’m good. After literal years, I think I can wait a few months. I’ll just jerk off a lot.” 

“And they say romance is dead.”

They grinned at each other like a pair of goobers. 

“You know,” Booster began thoughtfully, breaking the easy silence, “there’s no reason to keep my apartment in DC anymore. You’ve got plenty of room here.”

“Is that so?” Ted said, amused.

“We’ve lived together before. We’re living together now, so we might as well make it official. Come on, it’ll be great! It’s been years since I’ve been anybody’s live-in boytoy.”

“You legally can’t call yourself a ‘boytoy’ if you’re over thirty-five,” Ted informed him soberly. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules.” 

“The authorities don’t have to know. Can’t I call myself your boytoy in the privacy of our own home?”

“You can, but then I’m never touching your penis ever. The choice is yours.” 

Booster cackled into Ted’s shirt. “Aww, you say the sweetest things.” 

“There’s more where that came from, babe.”

Booster guffawed again, sounding so happy that Ted’s insides fluttered. Ted threaded their fingers together, feeling silly and young and deliciously content himself. He planted a kiss on Booster’s head, just because he could, and then said, “I’ve got to say, I’m kind of still stuck on the fact that you decided to French me five seconds before I went in for a major operation. The sight of me mooning all the nurses in that foxy gown got your motor going, didn’t it? Admit it.”

A dimple flickered in Booster’s cheek. He suddenly looked very satisfied with himself. “No, I just figured that way you’d come back.”

“I’m not following your logic.”

“If I gave you a puzzle to solve before you went in, there’s no way you’d let yourself die without having the chance to figure it out. I know how your big science brain works, Teddy. You hate not understanding things.”

Ted couldn’t help but laugh. 

* * *

* * *

  


  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of that, finally! 
> 
> I've had so much fun with this that I may possibly add a one-shot or two set in this same 'verse if inspiration strikes. Thank you all for reading! I've so appreciated hearing your thoughts.


End file.
